


Turning Back the Clock

by lexapride



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), X-Men - All Media Types
Genre: F/F, F/M, M/M, Multi
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-10-07
Updated: 2016-11-11
Packaged: 2018-08-20 01:01:12
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 52,278
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8230783
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lexapride/pseuds/lexapride
Summary: Daisy blinks and finds herself back sitting in her van three years prior to the events that happened at the Hydra castle. (3x10)  It's only seconds that she has to take in the fact that she has traveled through time because of the Monolith exploding and losing control of her own powers before familiar events begin to occur.When Ward and Coulson appear outside her van in their similar super spy suits and throw a bag over her head, bringing her to the BUS to get her help for their first case as an elite SHIELD team, Daisy has to become "Skye the hacktavist" again.With all this knowledge of the next three years still in her head, can she make sure the right information gets into the right hands? Or will she lose control of her future once more with even more dire consequences this time around?





	1. Changing her Story

**Author's Note:**

> So I've been going through an AoS phase and I've been obsessed with Skye. And even though I've read a bunch of Marvel fanfics recently, I hadn't found one where someone gets to travel back in time to possibly correct their mistakes and use their knowledge to affect their future.
> 
> I hope you guys like this.
> 
> Please comment and critique.
> 
> I won't promise anything since I've become inconsistent with updating my fics, but I will try to update often, as I go back and binge watch the entire show. I'm taking direct scenes and dialogue from the show and trying to adapt at least a little bit so it can transition into different outcomes in upcoming incidents.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Daisy Johnson is thrown back in time to the first day she met SHIELD. And now, with everything she knows, she has to go back to being Skye, the hacktavist who thinks outside the box to help Coulson and his team with their cases.
> 
> Already back one day and she has so many decisions to make regarding Ward, Hydra and who she should tell.

 

 

Skye blinked and jolted forward from where she was sitting. She nearly sprawled over her audio and computer set up in her van. It only took seconds to recognize where she was before the side door slid open, showing Coulson and Ward in their dark suits, standing there. She was shocked and confused enough that she didn’t fight back when Ward threw a hood over her head and grabbed her from the van.

Skye’s mind was racing as pieces began to form in her mind as to what had happened. Hydra’s Castle. Maveth. Ward and his brother. FitzSimmons and Coulson. Malick. The Monolith exploding from her final burst of vibrations. Drops of buzzing dark liquid latching onto her skin and literally vibrating her. And a single word whispered through the vibrations. "HIVE."

Skye felt herself being handcuffed and ushered into a car and couldn’t help remembering the last time she’d been grabbed like that. It had happened almost three years ago. Skye froze at that thought. She started to catalogue her memories and comparing them to what was currently happening to her now and couldn’t find a difference. The suits AC and Ward were wearing were exactly the same. Ward’s hair was the same style and her van had been recording an audio just like the first time she met SHIELD. Plus, Coulson still had his hand.

The car came to a stop and Skye was pulled out of the vehicle and tugged along. Skye felt her feet meet the ramp of the BUS and within no time was having the handcuffs being unlocked and ushered into the Cage on the BUS. The hood was removed and Ward not-so-gently dropped her into a chair. Coulson closed and locked the door and Skye looked down at herself.

She was still wearing her Caterpillars outfit and her hairstyle was still wavy and short, but Coulson and Ward both looked three years younger. Skye closed her eyes for a moment, mentally reaching for that hidden reservoir of her powers and could feel it lightly buzzing within herself. That hidden pool of energy was so small though that Skye knew if she tried to call on them, she’d instantly get a nosebleed for her troubles and collapse. She’d somehow transported herself through time with her own abilities and they were so shot right now and her body so exhausted, that sitting upright was a challenge.

“This is a big mistake.” Skye whispered to herself.

“You don’t look that big.” Ward sneered and Skye froze, remembering those same words.

“Sorry, for the lack of finesse. Agent Ward here has had a little history with your group, the Rising Tide.” Coulson told her and Skye frowned at him.

“What are you talking about?”

“Okay, there are two ways we can do this.” Ward said stonily.

“Let me guess, one of them is the easy way?” Skye snarked back out of habit before the sense of deja vu washed over her.

“No.” Ward answered simply.

“What’s your name?”

Skye opened her mouth to answer before stilling, considering everything for a long moment and then asking, “What’s today’s date?”

Coulson and Ward both frowned down at her, exchanging skeptical looks before Coulson answered her. “It’s September 24th, 2013.”

Skye let out a shaky breath. “I’m not dreaming, am I?” She murmured to herself, reaching up and pinching her arm.

The two agents watched her, one with concern, the other with suspicion clear on their faces. Skye resigned herself to her current predicament and straightened in her chair before looking up at Coulson.

“You can call me Skye.”

“What’s your real name?” Ward asked but Coulson cut him off.

“That can wait. It’s another name we need. A certain hero.”

Skye furrowed her brows, trying to remember how this particular meeting had gone. “What makes you think I know that?”

“Well, you made a little mistake.” Coulson told her. “The phone you recorded the Hooded Hero with had the same cryptographic signatures a few of the Rising Tide posts did.”

Skye couldn’t help but snort. “Yeah, it wasn’t a mistake. I wanted to get caught. Because I’m now in your secret headquarters.” Skye pretended to look around. “Or plane. And by now you’ve discovered you can’t beat the encryption on my equipment so, you’ve got nothing.”

“We have a fairly strong coincidence.” Coulson told her and opened the file in his hands to reveal pictures of the building explosion in LA. “You, being on the scene, right before it went up in flames. Want to tell me what my team is gonna find there?”

Skye’s thoughts briefly went to FitzSimmons and May who were probably already at the scene of the explosion. She remembered the tech and DWARFS that they used on their earlier cases as a team which recorded the data and tried to remember what they would find at the blast site that would help them with their first case together. The surveillance camera with images and recording before the explosion as well as the alien metal.

“How did you know the hooded man was in the building?” Coulson brought her out of her thoughts.

“Did you blow it up to draw him out?” Ward asked her.

“No! Did you?” Skye snarked back.

“That’s not our style.” Coulson answered.

“I was just kidnapped by your style. SHIELD covered up New Mexico, Project Pegasus. Of course you’d be covering up Project Centipede.”

Skye recalled this conversation and watched as Coulson and Ward shared looks. Ward stood behind her mouthing the word:  _Centipede?_

Skye smirked at them. “Holy, no way. You don’t know what that _is_ , do you? _Billions_ of dollars of equipment at your disposal and I beat you with a _laptop_ I won in a _bet_?”

“You need to think about your friend." Coulson said evenly. "We’re not the only ones interested in people with powers. We’d like to contain him, yeah. The next guy will want to exploit him, the guy after that will want to dissect him.”

Ward put his hand on the table and leaned over her intimidatingly. "What is Centipede?” He asked in a steely voice.

Skye pushed him away - to his surprise - to stand up and pace. “I don't know much. There was chatter on the web, and then gone. I traced the access point mac address to that building.”

“What were you after?” Ward questioned.

“The _truth_.” Skye said it like it was obvious. “What are you after?”

“World peace.” She scoffed at that. He shook his head at her and stood up, walking closer but she refused to back down, even though she knew exactly what he was. “You pseudo anarchist hacker types love to stir things up but you’re never around for the fallout. People keep secrets for a reason, _Skye_.”

He was mocking her chosen name because it wasn’t real. It was the one she'd picked after she’d erased herself out of existence first.

Skye faced him, refusing to back down. “Well, just because you’re reasonable and firm doesn’t mean that you’re not an evil, faceless government tool-bag.”

“Just give us your guy’s name.” Ward said tiredly.

“He’s not _my_ guy!” She threw up her hands at him, exasperated.

“You understand he’s in danger!” Coulson reminded her.

“Then let me go! Let _me_ talk to him. Not the, T-1000 here.” She gestured to Ward.

“You want to be alone with him? Of course.” Ward stepped over towards Coulson. “She’s a groupie. All this hacking into SHIELD, tracking powers. She might as well be one of those sweaty cosplay girls crowding around Stark Towers.” Ward told Coulson.

Skye just rolled her eyes before kicking his legs, and grabbing his gun from his holster. Coulson jumped up, as did Ward, but both stopped short as they watched her empty the magazine, and the spare bullet from the chamber, slamming the parts onto the table and stepping away.

“Can a sweaty cosplay girl do that?” She asked him irritatedly with her eyebrow cocked.

Ward reached for his weapon on the table, slowly putting it back together and then holstering it as Coulson opened the door and indicated Ward should follow him. Skye watched them go smugly while Coulson began to reprimand Ward.

“Is it the girl? She getting under your skin?”

“Sir!” Ward started but Coulson kept going.

“Or is it the assignment? Are you so anxious to get out of this that you deliberately blow an interrogation and underestimate her enough that you let her take your weapon from you?” Coulson looks back at him, shaking his head.

“She caught me off guard! Just give me a minute alone with her and you’ll have your answers.” Ward leaned over as Coulson retrieved a case from a metal cabinet in the command center of the plane.

“She’s an asset!”

“She is such a - wait, asset?” Ward asked.

“We know nothing about her.” Coulson told him, putting the case on the holotable. “Do you appreciate how often that happens? That never happens. We need what she knows.” Coulson opens the briefcase revealing a sort of mechanical injection gun.

When the agents come back into the room with a truth serum and it’s corresponding injector, Skye watches nonchalantly as AC explains it to her.

“This is QNB-T16. It’s the top-shelf martini of sodium pentothal derivatives. It’s a brand-new and extremely potent truth drug. Don’t worry the effects only last about an hour.”

“You don’t have to do this, you know.” Skye told Coulson and he blinked at her easy attitude.

Ward loomed over her though, “Once we’re done, you’ll have a nice little nap and we’ll have all the answers to our - hey!” Coulson shot the truth serum into Ward’s arm. “What the hell?” Ward hissed out in a low voice.

“I’m sorry, did that hurt?” Coulson said in a light, almost too-apologetic, tone.

“No!” Ward was indignant. “But you’ve lost your mind. You should never do that to a member of your team - and yes, it did hurt a little bit. But I always try and mask my pain in front of beautiful women ‘cause I think it makes me seem more masculine. _My God,_ this stuff works fast.” Ward looked down at his arm and slowly sat down, trying to come to terms that his Commanding Officer just shot him with a truth serum.

Ward's words kept getting louder, speeding up and his upper body seem to gesture more when he rambled. It was hilarious to watch. Skye smirked at him before lifting an eyebrow and meeting Coulson's gaze

“Don’t trust us? Ask him whatever you like.” Coulson circled around the younger two and the table as Ward protested.

“Wait a minute. Wait, you can’t just - this is definitely not protocol!” Ward called after him but Coulson closed the door on him, locking them both in.

Skye smiled predatorily at Ward and unzipped her Caterpillar jacket, slipping it off her shoulders and slinging it over her chair. She leaned over the table giving him a generous view of her cleavage in her tank top as his eyes dropped down to her chest for a moment before meeting her gaze again.

Skye considered her position. She knew the cameras were recording and thought quickly. If she asked him the right questions she could expose him for being a HYDRA agent right now and everything he knows about Garrett, Deathlok, the Centipede program as well as any other fellow HYDRA agents. But if the timeline was playing out like it did before, Mike Peterson would become dangerous to the rest of the community again. And, she realized, somehow she’d been given a fresh start. Even though she still had her Inhuman abilities, her knowledge of the next three years could be detrimental in keeping SHIELD intact as a spy organization and exposing HYDRA as well as stopping the threat of the Winter Solider and Project Insight ahead of time. So she made a decision. To follow her script.

“You seem nervous, Agent Ward.” She gave him a tiny smile and stood up, practically stalking him as he spoke.

“I’m calling to mind my training. There’s no way I’m gonna reveal classified secrets to a girl who’s hell-bent on taking us down.”

“Have you ever killed anyone?” She hovered over his shoulder.

“Yes, a few.” He answered instantly then closed his eyes in frustration with himself as she circled around leaning on the table on his other side. “High-risk targets. But they were terrible people, who were trying to murder nice people." He made sure to keep eye contact with her and not her chest. "And I didn’t feel good afterwards.”

“And does your grandmother know about these things?” She asked him, cocking her head as if flirtatious and coy, a mocking tone to her voice. He grimaced before looking up at her.

“Gramzy?”

By the time Skye was done having fun with Ward and his truthful answers, it was dark and Skye was let out of the Cage while Ward slept.

“Did Agent Ward give you anything?” Coulson asked even though he knew she hadn’t asked any real penetrating classified questions.

“He told me he’s been to Paris, but he’s never really seen it and that he wishes he got to stay in Tahiti.”

“It’s a magical place.” Coulson smiled at her and Skye had to recall her training with May to keep her face blank.

“Ward doesn’t like your style.” Skye told the agent. “Kinda think I do.”

“What about his?” Coulson asks and using the holotable in the command center on the BUS shows Skye a news reel of Mike Peterson angrily beating his previous employer at the factory he worked at.

“This is wrong.” Skye said disappointedly. “This is not the guy I met. He was,” she sighs. “He just needs a break.” She tells AC.

“Then give him one.” He says softly and Skye nods her head slowly. “What have you got?”

She reaches inside her pocket but doesn’t have Mike Peterson’s ID that she’d originally stolen that day three years ago. “I don’t have anything on me, but I can pull up everything I know about him.” Skye tells AC, gesturing to the holotable and Coulson pauses.

“You don’t know how to use it, though.”

Skye keeps her face as blank as possible before rolling her eyes. “Come on, AC. I might not be a genius, but I think I can figure it out.” Finally, Coulson nods, stepping aside for her, watching her carefully.

When the rest of the team gets there, Coulson briefs FitzSimmons, and May about Mike.

“Michael Peterson. Factory worker. Married. One kid. Gets injured. Gets laid off. Wife jumps ship. Good guy. Bad breaks.” Coulson lists off the information. “Best guess is, somebody tells him they can make him strong again. Make him super.”

“Who has the tech to do that and why would they want to?” May asks and Skye jumps at the perfect opportunity for her to start planting seeds of knowledge ahead of time.

“Well, I think they’re trying to make super-soldiers.” She says to the group and they all turn to look at her. “When I met with Mike, he was trying to hide it, but he has a device attached to his arm that actually looks like a Centipede. It has a clear casing with an orange drug on the back and what looks like steel metal keeping it glued to his skin. I assume it’s regularly cycling through his blood. I don’t know what it is, but obviously it gave him super-strength.” She paused thinking deeply for a moment. “What if this lab is the one that gave it to him? He was near the building when it exploded and he went up to that top level specifically and saved that woman - and she was wearing a lab coat. Didn’t it mention on the news that she was a doctor? He saved her, because she made the drug that did this for him.” Skye realizes and everyone stares at her thinking it all over.

“Fitz, what do we have from the security footage before the blast?” Coulson asks and the engineer pulls it up from the holotable to the screen against the wall.

“What are we seeing here?” May asks.

“Well the man is angry, at the other man.” Fitz states the obvious. Skye fights another eye roll.

“The data is very corrupt.” Simmons makes excuses.

“Yeah, like Cold War Russia corrupt.” Fitz jokes. “I can’t sync the time code without-”

“What if you had the audio?” Skye interrupts remembering her part here. “I was running surveillance on the lab, I had my shotgun mic pointed at the window before the blast. The digital file’s in my van. There’s too much background noise for me but you could probably-”

“You could clean that up, can’t you?” Simmons asks Fitz.

“Find a sync point and use cross-field validation-”

“But I can’t scrub for expression patterns to find when the vit-c is all-”

“Well, is there a chrominance subcarrier?”

“Yeah, attached to the back porch. Brilliant.”

FitzSimmons thank Skye for her offer, finishing each other’s sentences.

“Your van’s here. But you were right, we couldn’t decrypt the files.” Coulson tells Skye.

“The encryption’s coupled to the GPS. Get my van back to that alley and then I’m in business. But we should hurry.”

“Why?” Coulson asked.

“When I met with Mike, I originally told him I could help him with a new identity if he needed and warned him against you guys. You know scary men in suits and all, covering up information and events like this. And since he’s all over the news he’ll probably be headed for me so I can help him get out of town undetected, most likely through Union Station. I don’t know if your agents can handle a paranoid super-powered person.” Skye told them and AC nodded to her.

“We’ll be fine. Agent May will escort you. And on your way out, wake up Ward. And Skye, could you pull up all the information you can get on this woman in the hospital? I want to know everything we can about her.” Skye nods.

May and Skye got back to alley in her van easily and May stood outside, the side door open so she could watch the younger girl and keep an eye on the alley as Skye worked. She called up the BUS, speaking to AC and FitzSimmons so she could let them know when she was done.

“Audio file should be coming through, it’s not compressed so it might take a minute.” Skye told them.

Fitz confirmed it was coming through and then awkwardly tried to make conversation, accidentally making innuendos. He hung up on her embarrassed, as he set up a virtual playback of the security camera and linked over the audio Skye was sending through.

All the while, Simmons was studying the strange metal they’d found at the explosion site, while Coulson questioned her.

“So the alien metal wasn’t the explosive?”

“Well I assumed from the break pattern and dispersion that it was but, it’s just dripping with gamma radiation and - now it’s actually dripping!” She squeals excitedly while Coulson watches anxiously.

“So what did that get us?” Ward stomps through the lab angrily.

“Skye’s sending us the rest of her decrypted files on Centipede.” Fitz tells Coulson. “But we have her audio, I’ve loaded it up.”

"Nice work!" Coulson says pointedly and Ward tries not to glare at his C.O.

Fitz continues to move around, explaining what he is doing. “Now using motion estimation, bayesian inference, a beam splitter and a little diffraction theory, our mystery man . . . appears.” Fitz actually managed to emit a holographic display of the security camera from the lab.

Ward steps forward assuming the explosives are in the boxes and cases shown in the holograph.

“ **Please calm down. Just let me check your vitals.** ” The man in the lab coat from the 3D lab is saying. The second man dressed casually in the virtual video demands to see the doctor for another dose of the centipede drug. He’s very angry and picks up a chair to throw down as he loses control of his temper. Fitz rewinds the video a bit as Coulson and Ward spot the Centipede device on his arm. Simmons walks up explaining what it looks like to her.

“It’s an intravenous filter for his blood. This goo - sir, very similar to the serum Dr. Erskine developed in the 40s for the . . .”

“Super soldiers.” Coulson finishes for her. “Skye was right.”

“I’m reading alien metal, gamma radiation, the serum - every known source of superpower thrown into a blender.” Simmons continues explaining.

“We need to see the origin of the blast.” Coulson tells Fitz. “Run it back from the last point recorded.”

Meanwhile, back in her van, Skye finishes downloading everything she can on the doctor Mike saved from the lab onto a flash drive. "Alright, that should do it." Skye says then turns. She slyly grabs a tiny microchip from underneath a pad of paper and slips it into her bra when May isn't looking.

"We need to get out of here." Skye tells the older woman.

“Let’s head back.” May agrees. Skye freezes listening to the sounds outside.

“May, look out!”

Mike Peterson jumps down from the fire escape and grapples with May before finally getting a grip and throwing her into the alley wall, knocking her unconscious.

“Mike, what are you doing?” Skye says worriedly.

“Saving you, from the scary men in dark suits. And you’re gonna help save us.” He answers.

Skye stares at him knowing the answer to the question she's going to ask anyways. “Us?”

Mike pulls his son, Ace out from hiding and into the van while Skye moves out of the way.

“Don’t cry. Okay? Stay strong for me Ace. What are we?”

“We’re a team.” The kid answers nervously.

“That’s right.” Mike turns to Skye and frowns. “Did you get a haircut? And change clothes?”

“Uh, yeah.” Skye tells him. “Wanted a new look.”

Back on the BUS, Fitz rewinds the camera in slow motion til everyone can see the explosion rolling back until it’s origin is obvious. The angry man in the recording, there's an almost orange glow beneath his skin as it seems to pulse and then burst.

“Extremis.” Coulson says. “It’s new. Completely unstable.”

“Poor man, didn’t bring an explosive. And Mike has the same stuff in his system.” Simmons says sadly.

“And judging by his strength level, a lot more.” Ward concludes.

“So any minute now-” Fitz begins.

“He’ll take out anyone within a two-block radius.”

“Well,” Coulson walks up to them and turns to Ward, remembering their first meeting earlier and his special skill-set at defusing bombs. “You wanted a bomb.”

Ward begins assembling a sniper rifle in the command center when Simmons walks up to the older two agents.

“Sir? He didn’t explode because he was angry." She pauses, trying to figure out how to explain. "The two are connected. It’s kind of a chemical surge, but calming him down will buy him a minute at most. He will detonate within the next few hours.”

“Solution?” Coulson asks.

“Isolate him, get him away from people?” Simmons suggests.

“Or?”

“Put a bullet in his brain.” Fitz states bluntly.

“If he’s dead, this irradiated metabolic process will stop.” Coulson glances back at Ward assembling his gun and sighs.

“We need to come up with a third option. One that doesn’t involve Mike’s son losing a father.” He steps back into the command center.

“We have a couple of hours at most. There’s no way that we could possibly-”

Coulson spins back around to the scientists with a determined look on his face. “Don’t ever tell me there’s not a way! It’s on you! Get it done!” He turns away and FitzSimmons hurry back to their lab. Coulson answers his phone. “May?”

“He took Skye.” She tells him leaning against the alley wall.

“You alright?”

“We’ll deal with that later - at length." She's barely containing her anger right now. "Right now, we need to figure out where they went.”

“She mentioned the train station.” Coulson tells her.

At LA Union Station, Skye’s van is parked right outside and she’s typing on her keyboard, making sure to erase any trace of Mike Peterson or his son.

“How long is this gonna take?” He asks her.

“This is top speed, trust me. It’s not like I’m deleting a Facebook page. I’m bypassing the License Bureau’s A.E.U.-protected data stream, so chill.”

“How do I know you can really do this?” Mike asks paranoid.

“I’ve done it before.” She answers easily. “If you give me a few more minutes I can even make you guys new identities, ones no one will ever find.” She offers.

“No, no. Not yet. We’ll do it when we get there.” Mike says. Skye sighs as she finishes deleting his and his son’s existence from the world wide web.

Meanwhile, FitzSimmons are in their lab hurriedly trying to come up with a paralyzing agent to neutralize Mike without killing him and stabilizing the Extremis in his blood. Fitz’s computer starts beeping and he looks up baffled.

“Oh no, what is this nonsense? Why are you making nonsense?” Simmons asks her partner as she looks over his shoulder.

“This isn’t me! It’s noise, someone’s hacking our secure channel!” He explains.

“It’s longitude and latitude.” Coulson says as he rushes through the lab. “Mike took Skye. She’s telling us where.”

Skye is still working on her computer while Mike talks to his son. He's anxious and sweating but his focus on his boy allows him to tell Ace that instead of taking an airplane they'll take a train, bring the nice lady with them to help them start up a new life - like it's an adventure.

Coulson and Ward beat May to the train station and see Skye’s van parked outside. They get out with their guns drawn but Coulson has a loudspeaker too.

“Look at this place.” Ward tells the senior agent glancing around at the people around them. “You’re gonna risk thousands of lives over some nobody?”

“Nobody’s nobody, Ward.” Coulson says almost scolding him. “FitzSimmons will come through.” Coulson raises the loudspeaker and turns it on. “Mr. Peterson, good morning. We’re not a threat. We’re here to help. But you’re in danger and we need to take you in.”

“What did you do?” Mike yells at Skye. He begins to panic, his adrenaline and anxiety spiking as he tries to figure out what to do. He puts his hands out, ready to smash the door off it's hinges and knock out whoever's standing behind it.

Skye spins at the last second just as Mike raises his foot to kick out the door. She pours what little energy she has left for her abilities into her hands to manipulate the vibrations so that the door literally falls away instead of flying across the pavement. The cops outside jump back out of the way and Mike grabs his son and Skye and run into the train station.

Skye thinks quickly, trying to remember how she handled this situation last time and sees a group of tough-looking guys crossing their path. She kicks one guy in the crotch, hard.

“You’re right.” She turns glances at Mike and then back to the guys. “He is a little bitch!” She sneers.

The group of men go to attack Mike and he lets go of Skye to defend himself. She and Ace both rush off in different directions.

Coulson finds Ace and motions a policeman over to collect him. "Let's get him out of here." He tells the cop.

"Help my Daddy." Ace says worriedly and Coulson nods to him.

"I promise."

Ward comes up from behind Mike, kicking him in the back of the legs - much like Skye did to him - and Mike is forced to his knees. Ward wraps his arms around Mike’s neck, trying squeeze his throat so he’ll fall unconscious without any air.

“Look, the stuff inside you is unstable. It’ll kill you and everyone in here.” Ward tries to reason with him.

“Who’s gonna miss us?” Mike manages to stand and slam Ward into the Metro Rail schedule behind them, breaking it and then flips him onto his back on the ground, knocking the breath from Ward.

Mike spins seeing Skye running and goes after her. She rushes for the exit before remembering too late that it doesn’t open. She turns right into Mike just as someone dressed like a cop shoots a shotgun at them, missing. Mike kicks open the door, dragging Skye with him in his tight grip.

May finally gets there and Coulson alerts her where he and Ward are.

“We’re at the north entrance, May.” Coulson helps Ward up as they both stare at the corner of the station where the noise of the shotgun came from.

“You told them to hold fire." Ward says.

“I don’t think that’s us. We may have a third party here.” Coulson says through the coms. "He’s gonna head down to the tracks. You should stay high, I’ll go low.” Coulson tells Ward. “Only take the shot if you have to, Ward.” The younger agent walks away. “Ward!”

“If I have to.” He repeats glancing back at Coulson.

Mike and Skye take the stairs outside still under construction into the atrium of the station, looking down on everyone else.

“Mike you gotta stop! These people can help you!” Skye struggles with him.

“The men in suits? They’re your buddies now?” He sneers at her.

“No!” She argues. “Mike, look at me. Look at me!” She shakes his arm and he turns towards her. “Your son is outside, safe, but you are not.” His grip tightens.

“You said you were gonna help me!”

“Mike, you watched me erase you from every system on this planet! I did exactly what you told me to, but you were scaring me!”

“Scaring you? _I_ was scaring you?”

“Yes! You threatened to kidnap me, just like those suits did before you got there. But these guys are different. They don’t want to erase you, they don’t want to experiment on you - they just want to _help_.”

“They took my son! Help my find my son!” He shouts just as May arrives at the top of the stairs inside the atrium, but before she can do anything Skye is screaming at him.

“Not unless you calm down!” He and May both look at her in surprise. Skye grabs his other arm, pushing up his sleeve and points at the device on his arm. “This drug is enhancing you, Mike. It makes you strong, makes you feel in control. But right now you’re not, and your brain can’t handle that feeling. It’s making you dizzy, clouding your judgement. And because your brain can’t compute, it’s sending the wrong messages to the rest of your body. Your adrenaline is racing, your emotions are heightened and you can’t reign in your anger or fear or anxiety! There are cops and guys in suits here and you see them as a threat, but right now they’re not the ones hurting other people and fighting. You are! I told you I thought you were a hero, and somewhere in there you still are. But you aren’t acting like it, you aren’t showing your son that you can be a hero! So, here.” Skye takes the arm she’s holding and puts his hand against her chest so that he can feel her heart beating. “Breathe _with_ me, slow your heart rate down to mine, and _calm down_.”

Mike watches her worriedly for a moment but begins to do as she says, breathing deeply in sync with her and May stares at the two.

But they’re interrupted.

A tall stocky blonde man, dressed like a cop, comes up the steps from outside, spotting Mike and Skye through the glass and shoots his shotgun at them.

“Get down!” Mike yells and pushes Skye away from him, knocking her off her feet.

He faces the fake-cop and but is shot in the shoulder, the force knocking him over the ledge, falling three stories and crashing into an empty information booth. The fake-cop cocks his gun to shoot at Skye but May is already there.

With five strong moves he’s on the ground out cold. She meets Skye’s gaze still in her crouch and Skye can’t help smiling at her as she shakes her head, disappointed in herself. She can’t believe she forgot about the man with the gun as they’d been running from him just moments ago. Skye stands up and limps her way over to the ledge to look down on the scene unfolding in front of her.

Coulson walks up to Mike slowly, seeing the orange glow beneath Mike's skin pulse before it returns to normal. When he's only a few yards away, he sets down his gun - but Mike, having lost what little calm he’d regained with Skye, stares defiantly at the man in the suit.

“Think that means anything? Skye told me you guys are trying to help me, but I know you have men everywhere waiting to put me down." He can see Ward up above with his gun pointed right at him. "I know how this plays out.”

“I don’t.” Coulson tells him. “I know you got poison in your system. I know it’s burning you up. Mike, the last guy who wore that, _exploded_.” Coulson points to the Centipede device on his arm.

“I’m not like that other guy! It matters who I am - inside, if I’m a good person, if I’m strong.”

“I have a clear shot. Do you copy?” Ward mutters through his coms. Coulson swallows ignoring the report.

“I know you’re strong.” Coulson tells Mike. “Your boy knows it. He needs you to let us help.”

“You _took_ him!" Mike looks at him with a pained expression. "You took my wife, my job, my house. You think this is killing me?” Mike shows him the glowing orange device on his arm as May and Skye finally make it to the ground level. “All over, there’s people being pushed down, being robbed. One of them tries to stand up-" He rips a pillar from the broken booth behind him, his energy and anger fueling him "you gotta make an example of them.”

“You bring this building down on us, will that help them?”

“That’s a lie!" Mike spins with the pillar knocking down the remnants of the booth in his frustration. "All you do is lie!" His anger pulses with the orange glow under his cheeks. "You said if we worked hard . . . if we did right . . . we’d have a place." Mike walks up to Coulson slowly. "You said it was enough to be a man. But there’s better than man." Mike says opening his arms in exasperation. "There’s gods. And the rest of us . . . what are we? They’re giants. We’re what they step on.” He says sadly.

“I know.” Coulson says solemnly, stepping closer to Mike. “I’ve _seen_ giants - up close. And that privilege cost me . . . nearly everything. But the good ones . . . the real deal - they’re not heroes because of what they have that we don’t. It’s what they do with it. You’re right, Mike. It matters who you are.”

“I could, you know? Be a hero.” Mike says remembering Skye's words.

“I’m counting on it.” Coulson says reassuringly.

Skye braces herself as she remembers what comes next and a silenced gunshot can be heard in the immediate vicinity. Mike is knocked down with the force of it. May and Coulson both swing their gazes up, even as Simmons rushes forward, to see the orange glow in Mike's cheeks diminish, turning blue from the special bullet. Ward stands up with a modified rifle, Fitz standing behind him to see his own handiwork. Coulson steps forward as Simmons examines Mike’s previously glowing skin, checking his pupils and his pulse. She glances back at her team and smiles, while Skye lets out a breath and May gestures a stretcher and some paramedics to Mike. Coulson meets Skye's gaze with a grin, while Fitz gives Simmons a thumbs up. Coulson glances up with just a tiny nod at Ward who looks down at Coulson seeming happy and impressed with his leadership.

Coulson reports into SHIELD H.Q. about their case. "Subject is in stable condition. All clear at Union Station."

 

Skye goes with Coulson to take Ace to his Aunt and cousins wearing the same red dress she did the first time she did this with him.

“I told him his father was coming home.” She says to AC.

“He _will_. We have some experience with this.”

“You need to move Mike’s family somewhere else and keep it classified.” Coulson stops in his tracks at that and turns to her.

“I can’t believe you just uttered those words." He says almost teasingly. "And why would I do that?”

“Because if whoever is running this Centipede project realizes that Mike is alive and stable without the extremis in his system, they’ll track his family down and blackmail Mike into working for them. They’ll run tests, take his blood, experiment on him, make him hurt people, all while keeping his family prisoners.”

Coulson considers it for a long moment before finally nodding to her. “You might be right. They won’t like it, but we’ll explain it’s for their safety.”

“And have only people you trust move the Petersons and keep an eye on them.” Coulson’s stare deepened so she sighed and began to explain in a low tone. “Look, I trust _you_. But that doesn't mean I trust SHIELD. This project with the centipede serum-" Skye paused, shaking her head. "It's like multiple conspiracies all within each other. This feels bigger than your super spy organization and I don't have a lot of faith that a few agents can protect Mike's family compared to people  _you_ trust. Especially if they keep trying to make more super soldiers like Mike."

“Alright.” Coulson says after a minute. “I’ll call some people make sure that the Petersons are taken care of.”

“Good, cause I already made them new identities.” Skye admits. Coulson starts laughing.

“I knew you were gonna say something like that.” Skye grins, walking with him back to Lola.

“I can’t believe Mike almost blew. We almost died.”

“We have some experience with _that,_ too.”

“Don’t have it _all_ mapped out.”

“True. We didn’t cut off the head of the centipede. Whoever sponsored that little experiment is still out there, among other things.”

“It’s a brave new world, and a really old car.” Skye jokes.

“Lola can keep up. What about you? Have you thought about the offer?”

“Hitching a ride on the crazy plane? I’m not exactly a team player.” Skye remembers what to say to him. Coulson grins at her back.

“We’re not exactly a team. But we’re in a position to do some good. You’d be a great help. You’d be front row center to the strangest show on Earth - which is, after all, what you wanted.”

“I was able to hack SHIELD from my van, and I might not have been a sweaty cosplay girl, but I’ve broken through Stark’s firewalls a time or two.”

Coulson looks at her skeptically. “Seriously?” She nods and he looks thoughtful.

“So you think you’re gonna show me something new?” Skye dares him and right on time, AC’s cell phone rings. He puts it on speaker.

“Go.”

“Sir, we’ve got an 0-8-4.” Ward’s voice echoes.

“Is that confirmed?” Coulson asks a little surprised.

“They want us to go in and confirm it.”

“What’s an 0-8-4?” Skye plays along as Coulson ends the call and starts the engine.

“You’ve got exactly ten minutes to decide if you really want to know.” Coulson tells her and Skye snorts.

“Unless this thing flies, there’s _no way_ we can make it to the airfield in-” Coulson flips some switches and the car actually rises off the ground. “Ten minutes.” She finishes not having to hide her awe in getting to watch Lola fly.

Skye leans over to see that the tires have rotated horizontal to the ground, propelling it into the air with some sort of energy source.

“The tide is rising.” Coulson tells her and she grins at him.


	2. 0-8-4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Skye is swept along on a case with the team, allowing things to play out while at the same time trying to manipulate the people and events around her so that everyone stays safe. But even with the little bits of opinions and observations she reports to Coulson, it's seems she can't keep some things from playing out the same as the first time around.
> 
> In the end, Skye has to make a difficult decision to finally tell the truth to one of her teammates in order to make a difference in the long run.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I'm basing these off the episodes.
> 
> I am gonna have one chapter separate between cases where Skye will actually meet with all those necessary who need to know the information she has for the next three years. Hope you like that one coming up. It'll probably be shorter than the other ones since it's just gonna be a bunch of dialogue and meeting of the minds.
> 
> Let me know if you guys like it. I did go back and edit a bit of the first chapter. Nothing too serious, just trying to keep the timeline and the details straight in my mind.
> 
> Hope you guys like this one.  
> Enjoy!

 

 

Skye finished packing up what little she needed from her van so she could officially move onto the BUS. She jumped out of her van staring back at it fondly and spoke to one of the agents taking her van to a storage facility.

“Hey, no joy rides, okay? That’s my house.” She turns, starting the walk up the ramp.

Meanwhile Ward and May meet with Coulson in the command center about the girl in question.

“That girl’s not qualified to be a SHIELD agent.” Ward says dismissively.

“Agreed,” Coulson tells them. “That’s why I’ve invited her on to be a consultant. SHIELD does it all the time. Technically Stark’s a consultant.”

“And technically Skye’s a member of the Rising Tide. She hacked our RFA implementation”

“Twice. From a laptop.” Coulson says impressed. “Imagine what she’ll do with our resources.”

“I am. That’s exactly what I’m imagining during this frown.” Ward disagrees. “You brought me on for Risk Assessment. She’s a risk. She doesn’t think like us.”

“Exactly.” Coulson smiles at him.

Fitz and Simmons walk out of the lab to greet Skye warmly, if though with a bit of apprehension.

“Oh, Agent Coulson told us the news.” Simmons smiled at her. “What a wonderful surprise, isn’t it Fitz?”

“Yeah, a surprise.”

“Yep, first day of school.” Skye says sarcastically. FitzSimmons lead her up the stairs.

May begins to speak her piece to Coulson about Skye.

“We already have two kids on this BUS who aren’t cleared for combat. You’re adding a third.”

“I think she can handle herself.” Coulson nods at Ward. “You saw her yesterday.”

Ward shakes his head. “At least FitzSimmons are trained SHIELD scientists. But Skye? You said this was a select team. Assembled to work new cases, to protect people. I don’t see how letting some hacker tag along-”

“I’m looking for an objection I haven’t already anticipated.” Coulson interrupted. “I’m calling this, but your frown will be on record.”

“We’ve been called in to investigate an 0-8-4, we all know what that means.” Ward moves topics quickly.

“Yes, we do. It means, we don’t know _what_ that means.” Coulson hands off his tablet to May who heads to the cockpit as FitzSimmons give Skye the tour.

“Officially, it’s an airborne mobile command station. But we call it the BUS. We find it best to use shorthand within the field. But everything has to be just so, you know, because of the danger.” Fitz tells her.

“Yeah, I’ve been up here before, but I didn’t see much because of the bag that Agent Ward put over my head.”

“Yes, so sorry about that. Water?” Jemma offers awkwardly.

“Wheels up in two, lock it or lose it.” May’s voice comes over the intercom.

“What’s that mean?” Skye asks pretending to be nervous.

“No backing out now, let’s find a bunk for our guest.” Simmons suggests.

“Oh, and there’s only one left and it’s right next to mine.” Fitz says excitedly.

He hurries over, setting Skye’s box down on the twin bed in the middle compartment against the far side of the plane and then rushing off. Skye sets her things down inside the small room and turns as Ward knocks on the wall divider.

“Hey, I know we didn’t-”

“Might want to read that. This isn’t like other planes.” Ward gives her a safety pamphlet to the massive BUS.

“You could say that again.” Skye mutters to herself, remembering how well she knows that.

“Say what again?” Coulson asks at her elbow. Skye just smiles.

“Sweet ride.” He nods at her.

“I earned a little goodwill from Director Fury when I got hit right before the Battle of New York.” Skye schools her face at his words.

“You took a bullet?” She questions in a low tone.

“Ish. An Asgardian stabbed me through the heart with a Chitauri scepter. The effect was similar. Got a few weeks R&R and this plane. Had it completely refurbished. Studs up - spared no expense.”

“Yeah, Agent Ward told me they sent you to Tahiti.”

“It’s a magical place.” Coulson said automatically with a smile on his face.

“You mentioned that.” Skye says hiding a grimace.

“Here. Use a coaster.” They sat down in the lounge area of the plane in front of the compartments. “Buckle up.”

“I don’t even know where we’re going.” Skye said.

“Peru, that’s where the 0-8-4 was reported.”

“And an 0-8-4 is . . .”

“An object of unknown origin.” Coulson answered her question. “Kinda like you.”

She smiled wryly to herself. _You have no idea._ She couldn’t help thinking to herself.

“The team goes in, determines if it’s useful or if it poses a threat.” Coulson explains. “Last one turned out to be pretty interesting.”

Skye opened her water taking a sip as she thought back and couldn’t help a grin. “Let me guess New Mexico, right? Thor’s hammer?” Coulson didn’t say anything and she shook her head still smiling.

They landed in Peru shortly and drove out to the Incan archaeological site where the 0-8-4 had been found in Llactapata.

“Tire tracks forty meters back.” Ward noticed as he got out of the SHIELD vehicle. “I’ll check them against the site’s trucks - make sure we’re alone.”

“Too much exposure here, I’m gonna find a place to park.” May told the team.

FitzSimmons walked with each other towards the Incan temple trading hopes of what to discover or even things to worry about out in the field.

“I would love to see a capuchin in the wild.” Fitz told Simmons. “Maybe even a yellow-tailed woolly monkey. You know, um, Peru has 32 different species of monkey.”

“Yeah, and close to 200 species of snakes. The shushupe has a fascinating venom. It’s neurotoxic, proteolytic, and hemolytic.”

“That’s fascinating.” Fitz says nervously. Simmons seems to pick up on his anxiety.

“Oh, no. I’d be much more concerned with earthquakes, mala-” Fitz slaps a mosquito on the back of his neck and Simmons sees that. “Ah. There’s no vaccine for dengue fever.”

They finally arrive at the temple.

“We should warn the people that live around here if the 0-8-4 is dangerous. They’re already dealing with anti-mining rebels and the shining path guerillas. I could post something.” Skye tells Coulson.

“Remember the panic when that anti-matter meteor splashed down just off the coast of Miami, nearly devoured the city?”

Skye sighed and rolled her eyes. “No.” She said knowing what was coming next.

“Precisely, because we kept it quiet and contained.”

“So what am I doing?” Skye asked exasperatedly.

“Well, if it gets out, I might need you to create some kind of diversion, put the public on the wrong scent.” He tells her.

“So, everything that I’m against.” Skye says disgustedly.

“Yep.” Coulson pops the word teasingly. Skye looks away into the forest as Coulson starts to walk toward the temple.

“You know the rebels aren’t the only ones we need to worry about.” He turns to look back at her. “If the national police have heard about the 0-8-4, they’ll want to come and take it for themselves to use against the rebels.”

“Use it? We don’t even know what it is yet.” Coulson tells her and turns away to meet with the man in charge of the archaeological dig. “Good morning, Professor. I’m Agent Coulson with SHIELD. I understand you’ve made an interesting discovery.”

“I’m not sure how to explain it. This temple dates back at least 500 years. It’s filled with pre-Incan artifacts. One of them looks - impossible and looks like it might be dangerous.”

“Well, that’s why we’re here.” Coulson reassures the man.

The professor led them all into the temple, showing them the strange device stuck into the wall. “Exactly how it is.”

“Who else knows about this?” Coulson asks.

“Just the ministry. I believe they are the ones who contacted you.”

“Sir, I need you and your team to evacuate the site until we determine the risk associated with this object.” Coulson tells the native as FitzSimmons begin setting up their equipment to analyze the metal and glowing blue device.

One of Fitz’s flying DWARFS moves closer to examine the object and the professor has to move out of the way.

“Leave the man alone.” Simmons scolds playfully.

“Now - for your own safety.” Coulson urges the native.

“There’s nothing about this anywhere.” Skye says as she searches through any and all databases she can think of for the device right in front of her. “It’s amazing. I searched every data stream. What do you got here, guys?” Fitz stops Skye from touching as Simmons begins to answer her.

“The object’s placement in fossiliferous rock formations suggests it’s been here for at least 1500 years. That pre-dates this temple by a millennium. Ha, maybe it’s alien!” Simmons says excitedly.

“Yeah, but the shape and the craftsmanship - it’s almost German.” Fitz observes.

Outside, Ward meets back up with May in front of the temple.

“Tires match the prof’s truck. Where’s your sidearm?”

“If I need a gun, I’ll take one.” May answers simply.

“Right. Forgot I was working with The Cavalry.” May gives him a dirty look.

“Don’t ever call me that.” She says in a low tone. 

“Apologies. I’ve heard the stories - what went down in Bahrain, about you in action. You know, it was smart of Coulson to pull you out of retirement." Ward wanders closer to the bushes as he makes conversation. "It’s nice to have a trusted friend who has your back.” With that last word, Ward reaches into the bushes, grabbing a limb and flipping a man in camouflage army wear out into the open. 

Two more men in camouflage wear appear and May knocks them to the ground easily within minutes, training their own guns on them as Ward holds the other in a headlock with his own gun pointed at the man's head. Vehicles drive up with more men in camouflage, holding assault rifles and they file out shouting Spanish at each other and the SHIELD agents surrounding the two.

“Should’ve taken more guns.” Ward quips to May.

A beautiful woman with her dark hair in a ponytail emerges from a jeep her very presence commanding attention and respect as she looks over the situation.

“Sir.” Ward speaks to Coulson through their coms.

“Go.”

“We have a situation.”

“Lots of rebels in this area.” Skye muses before remembering just who is outside.

“Not enough gunfire.” Coulson surmises. “Keep working. I’m on my way.” He speaks the last bit through the radio he’s holding and heading out of the temple. “Buenos Dias.” He begins, stepping up and out through the tunnel. “Soy Agente Coulson. Estamos aqui port un assent de la Seguridad Internacional.”

The woman in camouflage steps forward with some guards and seems to recognize Coulson. “Phillip?”

“Camilla?” He frowns down at her though then registers all the guns. “Do you mind?”

“After you.” She shakes her head.

Coulson nods to Ward and May and they both lower the weapons, allowing the men they’d taken down to get up and walk freely. The woman utters an order and the rest of the weapons are raised and swept back onto their shoulders. She jumps up the steps, standing in front of Coulson and greets him warmly, kissing him on the cheeks as he recognizes the bars and patches sewn into her shirt.

“Comandante - a promotion. Congratulations.”

“Three years ago, but thank you.”

“Agent Melinda May, Agent Grant Ward, this is Comandante Camila Reyes. She’s with the Policia Military del Peru. We used to work together back in the day.” Coulson introduces his team to his old friend and May can’t help the soft scoff as Coulson continues giving orders. “Let the team know everything’s okay.” Ward walks back up the steps to alert FitzSimmons and Skye of what’s happening outside.

“I know you found a strange object on Peruvian soil. We should have a conversation about how to proceed.” Reyes suggests.

“Of course. But an 0-8-4 supersedes all national claims.”

Reyes pauses at his words before trying another tactic. “You look good.” She smiles.

Coulson can’t help smiling back at her words and the change of topic, recognizing it for what it is. “Yeah, I work out.”

“Come, let me show you something.” Reyes puts her arms around his shoulder and tugs him down the steps with her.

Meanwhile, FitzSimmons are still in the temple studying the 0-8-4 and getting readings off their charts that make them nervous.

“Are you seeing this?” Fitz asks his partner. “It’s alive.”

Skye almost agrees with him out loud, she can feel the vibrations of the energy pulsing from the device. Instead she steps back, turning to face them. “Wha- _alive_ , alive?”

“It has a functioning power source.”

“Sleepy’s reading radionuclides, but they don’t match any known isotope.” Simmons explains to the hacker.

“I get temporal matches, but even then, they seem to shift. Is that even possible?”

Skye turns back around to look closer, examining the blue glow of the device and frowns at it.

“I’ve seen this before.” Skye mutters.

“You have?” Simmons asked surprised.

“Don’t you guys remember? From the news footage of the Battle of New York? That blue shining cube that opened the portal for those aliens?” Skye’s trying to lead them to answer their own questions.

“The tesseract?” Fitz offers the name and Skye nods.

“The blue glow, the energy powering it.”

“She might be right.” Fitz murmurs to Simmons and they both glance back down at their tablet that shows the data the DWARF is collecting.

Skye briefly puts her hand up, not touching it but emitting a low frequency of vibrations to keep the energy pulsing from the device calm and almost muting it. “I’m gonna go check on Coulson.” She tells the scientists but Ward comes in through the tunnel.

“We got company.” He tells them. “National police.”

“What?”

“Why are they doing here?” The Brit and Scot question.

“They heard about this device.” Ward tells them, walking over to it. “They’re probably here to protect it. This area has lots of rebel uprisings.”

“Yeah, people are fighting back against the government’s mining policies.” Skye says admiringly. “It’s pretty kick-ass.”

“Yeah, it’s kick-ass, all the violence.” Ward says with an edge to his tone.

“That’s not what I’m saying.” Skye counters.

“No, it’s what you’re typing, in your van, alone - where it’s safe. How much longer?” He asks the last question to the scientists who both protest at being hurried.

“Are we in danger?” Fitz asks.

“Not if everyone does their job.” He answers then turns back to Skye. “What is yours, exactly?”

She glares up at him and he can’t help being taken aback at the amount of heat and emotion behind her eyes. “Trust me, you don’t want to test me.” She threatens him quietly. He turns away with a blank expression on his face, backing down from the challenge in her eyes.

Meanwhile, Coulson walks through the small site with Reyes snacking on chocolate they grow in Peru as she tries to get in his good graces.

“You know me, Camila, I’m a pretty simple guy.”

She scoffs at him. “There was nothing simple about your last mission here.”

“I had some great help.”

“There isn’t any chance we get to keep the device is there?”

“It’s not mine to give, but I’m sure we can find a way to resolve this respectfully in a way that gives your coun-”

There’s an explosion behind them at one of the vehicles and two team leaders have their guns out within seconds.

“Rebels.” Camila tells Coulson.

“Stay close, on my six.” They run out their guns raised.

Back at the temple everyone ducks as the structure shakes from the nearby explosions, rock falling from the ceiling and Ward takes control.

“Sounds like they’re engaging with rebels. Time to go.” Fitz recalls his DWARF as Ward tries to rush him. “They’re coming for it, let’s move!”

Skye knows better than to offer to help FitzSimmons put away their gear, instead she steps back behind Ward’s figure. She closes her eyes for a moment, focusing on the vibrations around her and tuning out the larger explosions, trying to focus on the people creeping up to surround the temple. She looks farther and can see May racing for the SHIELD truck she parked in the forest. Coulson and Reyes are shooting at rebels together through the site, making their way towards the rest of the team.

“We need a containment case for the 0-8-4.” Simmons breaks her concentration.

Skye shakes her head at the scientist. “We don’t have time.” Ward tells them.

“But it has a fluctuating power core with frequencies way above 10 Exahertz.” Fitz argues.

Skye grabs the backpack duffel on the ground and drags it over as the boys continue to argue.

“Sorry, science class is over.” Ward says and moves towards the 0-8-4 but stops up short as Skye grabs it and with two firm tugs, pulls it free from it’s hole in the wall.

“Whoa! Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, wait! You did not just pull that out of the wall.” Fitz rushes over and Skye glances up at him.

“Fitz, look at this thing!” She starts putting it into the backpack. “It’s a weapon, unless it’s activated it won’t hurt anyone!”

“You don’t know that! Do you realize we do not know the amount of photon emissions coming out of this? Okay!” Skye spins him around and lugs the backpack around Fitz’s shoulders. “We don’t know what will happen if it gets excited!”

“You’re right, we don’t. But we can’t wait for it to get excited Fitz!” Ward tells him. “Walk steady and carefully and let’s try not to find out okay?”

“No! Not okay!” Fitz cries.

“Fitz! Come on!” Simmons calls him from the entrance of the temple.

Outside Coulson and Reyes are still shooting their way through the site. They take cover to take a breather and for Reyes to shout orders to her men.

“Your men need to fall back now or we’ll never make the runway! Now - your truck, let’s go!” Phil tells her.

With their backs to each other, Coulson and Camila rush through the rest of the site, spinning in tandem as they cover each other and fire back at the rebels.

Ward comes out hot shooting at the rebels, but Skye grabs hold of Simmons and Fitz from following out, pulling them down low against the walls of the temple entrance. He glances back to make sure the others are in the clear and whips out a folding metal prod with a fat device at the top. Coulson recognizes the SHIELD weapon from his cover in the forest.

“Tell your men to get down.” He urges Camila and she shouts to her squad.

They all dive for cover as Ward jumps into a roll off the temple steps, slamming the metal stick into the ground and activating the electric device on the top. It ejects itself into the air and hovers a good five feet off the ground. Ward ducks his head as it emits a powerful shockwave, knocking at least four rebels back into the trees.

“My truck!” Camila tells Coulson and he follows her.

Ward glances back and waves the rest of his team out and they rush forward as he cocks his gun again. Skye hangs off to the side of FitzSimmons, noticing one rebel back on his feet already cocking his rifle and pointing it at the three of them. She draws on her power and stomps on the ground, her power radiating through the ground and knocking the rebel off his feet, just as May comes flying out of nowhere with the SHIELD truck.

“Get in! Get in!” Ward shouts at the three of them and May opens the passenger door for Ward.

“Move! Now!” She shouts at them all.

“Yeah, that’s a good idea.”

“Yes.” FitzSimmons ramble anxiously.

Both trucks take off with a jeep full of rebels with guns racing after them, shooting.

“Coulson’s secure in PMP’s truck.” Ward reports to May. “Take the south route to the airfield.”

“Gotcha.” She nods.

“Slow down!” Fitz complains.

“You’re joking, right?” Skye asks.

“Ward, listen! We have to be careful. There’s a binding energy structure that could overheat.”

“I could roll down a window!” Simmons suggests and Skye looks at her incredulously.

“No!” Skye shouts at her. “Do not roll down your window!”

“Stay quiet and keep your heads down!” Ward tells them. “Head left, the ravine empties.” He says to May.

“But Ward!” Fitz raises his voice.

“Quiet!” The older agents scold Fitz. May presses on the control screen inside the SHIELD truck and opens the ramp on the BUS.

“How fast can you get the wheels up?” Ward asks.

May looks over at him, snapping, “Fast!” They pull up onto the ramp and park quickly. Ward and May exiting hurriedly. “Ramp!” She orders him and he nods.

“On it.”

The scientists and Skye get out of the car hurrying towards their lab.

“What are you doing?” Skye asks Ward as she carries Fitz’s equipment. “Coulson is still out there!”

“Get off the ramp, you’re in the line of fire.”

Ward pushes her towards the lab as he rushes down the ramp with his gun out, meeting Coulson and Reyes’ squad of soldiers as they rush onto the already rising ramp, still under fire from the rebels. By the time the ramp has finished closing, all necessary persons are present on the plane.

“Cutting it pretty close, sir.” Ward tells Coulson.

“Didn’t want to leave anyone behind.”

Skye sits down on the case panting. “I gotta say it. I miss my van.”

Ward turns to Fitz. “Now, what was the problem?”

“As I said before, this device has a high-frequency, fluctuating, sub-material compression-”

“Fitz, in English.” Ward tries to get him to simplify his words.

“Skye was right. The 0-8-4 is fueled by tesseract technology. Hydra. WWII. Captain America.” Skye stands up slowly as his words begin to register with her. “It’s full of lethal amounts of gamma radiation.”

“Gamma - you’re saying it’s nuclear.” Ward finally understands but Coulson shakes his head.

“No, he’s saying it’s much, much worse.”

Everyone visibly takes a step back away from the backpack with the 0-8-4.

Coulson heads up to the cockpit to radio in and report to SHIELD headquarters.

“ _And the 0-8-4 is in your possession_?” A woman from HQ asks.

“It’s on board and contains a tesseract fuel cell, so . . . there’s that.”

“ _Copy. You are a go for check-in guidance through restricted airspace. Safe travels._ ”

Coulson hangs the radio back up and looks out at the clouds around them while May silently flies.

“Top speed’s a priority, May. Obviously.” He almost sounds awkward. “I know you didn’t want to see combat. I apologize for that.” He pauses to see if she’ll say anything but then continues when she doesn’t. “Do you need anything else before I go check on to see the device fueled by evil that’s sitting in our cargo hold?” May says nothing then flips a switch on the ceiling, as if in response and Coulson nods at her. “This was fun.”

Down in the lab, Skye watches as Simmons removes the 0-8-4 from the backpack.

“Not to worry, the device is stable. Not that it couldn’t explode any minute, especially if hit with machine-gun fire. But things like this happen from time to time when in the field, and at first it’s very unpleasant and you regret your decision to leave the lab at all.” She nervously rambles.

The door slides open. “Are you two mental?” Fitz asks Ward and Skye from the back entrance of the lab. “I did explain in great detail exactly what I meant using the Queen’s bloody English!” He looks back and forth between Skye and Ward.

Ward’s jaw clenches before retorting back. “I use normal English - like ‘duck’ and ‘run’ and ‘might blow us to pieces!’”

Skye sighs as Fitz rolls his eyes. “Oh, wow. Well congratulations, Agent Ward. You managed to string three words together in a sentence.” He turns away, working on some of his equipment. Fitz and Ward continue to argue with each other as Coulson comes down the stairs outside the lab to see Camila and her men lounging around.

“Is everyone alright?” He asks them.

“Banged up but alive. Thank you for the extraction.” The last armed man puts his rifle in a container that Coulson closes and locks.

“But we lost a lot of men.” Camila says.

“We’ll make sure the rest of you get home safe.” Coulson tells her.

She watches Coulson’s teaming arguing over the device in the lab and shakes her head skeptically. “Are we safe? On a plane with that? There’s a PMP airfield in Iquitos. It’s a short distance-”

“We’ll burn as fast as we can for a SHIELD containment facility. There’s no safer place for us to go.”

“Sir, if I may?” One of the soldiers ask Coulson. “You got anything to drink around here?”

“Upstairs.” Coulson answers. “I think you’ll find it quite comfortable up there.”

Reyes’ squad heads up the stairs even as she lingers near Coulson. “I expect the grand tour.”

 “I know you do.” He tells her.

The lab doors open for Coulson and he walks into the tail end of Ward and Fitz shouting at each other.

“I’m trying to tell you-”

“. . . Don’t understand anything you are saying!”

“Do we have a problem in here?” Coulson asks eyeing them both and they immediately stop.

“No, sir. Just working on our communication.” Ward says with an edge to his tone. “Not everyone was prepared for a firefight.” He glances at FitzSimmons pointedly and she scoffs.

“We got out, didn’t lose anyone, saved a few of theirs - I’d say we did alright." Coulson states, glancing around at them all. "Anything else?”

Skye takes a moment, remembering this case and what she needs to say to make sure they get the same outcome. She raises her hand like a kid in a classroom and they all look at her.

“Uh, yeah, I have a small question, because I’ve been feeling like the tagalong hayseed rookie, but now I get the sense that Ward doesn’t know which one’s Simmons and which one’s Fitz and they’ve seen even less gunfire than me, and I’m not rocket scientist but is this your first mission together?”

“No, of course not!” Simmons protests. “It’s our second.” She tries to sound confident and failing.

“I was your first? That’s sweet.” Skye snarks and Ward looks at her with disdain.

“You’re amused?”

“I’m terrified. I am in way over my head, but I have been on this team just as long as any of you. I might as well be team captain.” Simmons scoffs. “I was joking, but maybe that’s not a bad idea, because these guys do not like each other much.” She says this specifically to Coulson, already moving around the holotable towards him.

“This isn’t about that.” Ward says through gritted teeth. “I’m a specialist. Today I could’ve eliminated the enemy threat myself if I was working alone, but I had non-combat ready agents-”

“Whoa, whoa. Wait. You work alone?” Fitz interrupted.

“So typical!” Simmons paced around to stand next to her partner. “Who do you think designs your equipment?”

“Or the polymers for your weaponry. People like us do it.”

“Yeah, try going into the field with just your bare bum.”

“See them proving the point I just made?” Skye asked Coulson.

“You’re not wrong.” He tells her. “We still need to iron out the kinks. But Ward, you can speak six languages. Simmons you have two PhDs in fields I can’t pronounce, and Fitz you are a rocket scientist. So work it out.” He walks out of the lab and Skye blinks watching him go, kind of offended he said nothing about her.

“I - I’m good at stuff, too.” She calls after him. She thinks for a minute before rushing after him. “Wait, Coulson.”

“Yes?” He asks her. Skye takes a breath before plunging off the deep end.

“You’re a super spy and you probably already know, so even though it’s kinda rude I'm gonna state the obvious here and tell you, your friend, Camila, is playing you.”

“You think she has an ulterior motive.” Coulson assumes and Skye nods to him.

“Well, yeah." She eyes him, her history with the man allowing her to see his thoughts despite his blank demeanor. "But so do you.” She says slowly.

Coulson considers it before acknowledging her words with a nod. “You’re right. I do know something’s up, but I also know Camila and I’m willing to give her the benefit of the doubt.”

“With all due respect, AC, it’s been three years since you’ve seen her and people change. You are living proof of that.”

“I’ll keep that in mind, Skye.” And with that dismissal he headed down the hallway where Reyes, herself was waiting.

Skye turned back, frustrated and headed back to the lab. Ward was just walking out but Skye stopped him with a hand on his arm.

"Uh, Simmons?" She asked. The scientist looked up at her. "You should probably look over Ward. His side is bleeding." She points and Ward looks at her in surprise.

"It's skin deep, nothing to worry about."

"What?" Simmons rushes over, pulling on some elastic gloves and tugging off his jacket for him.

He rolls his eyes, realizing he's not getting out of there any time soon.

"I'm so sorry, Agent Ward. If I'd known-"

"It's fine." He cuts her off as she lifts his shirt and begins wiping the blood away.

"Skye can you hand me that kit? And no, Agent Ward it isn't." Skye fetches what Simmons needs and watches her begin to clean his side. "You got shot protecting us today. That's on us. Especially for not completely cooperating." Simmons tells him. She glances up at her partner who is loading up his DWARF to the holotable. "Right, Fitz?"

The Scot looks over at them, sheepish. "Yes, I'm apologize for not recognizing your expertise in the field, Agent Ward."

The words come out as a truly sympathetic but still pointed at Ward. He sighs, recognizing them for what they really mean.

"And I'm sorry for not acting like a team player. We all have a bit of adjusting to do, I hope we can do better in the future." He says and the scientists both nod their heads agreeing with him.

"Most definitely."

"Yes, thank you."

Skye smiles at them all and turns to leave but stops herself remembering what she needed to tell the resident team geniuses.

"Hey Fitz, Simmons?” She asked them and they both turned to her. “If you’re gonna work in here for long, just . . . lock yourselves in would you?” Their expressions turned to surprise.

“Why?”

“Would you just, do it for me, please?” Skye asked with her best puppy dog eyes and they both sighed. “Thanks guys.”

She smiled and headed down the hall as Ward stared after her curiously.

The hacker unpacked a bit in her bunk, setting her decorative hula girl along the small windowsill, looking out for a moment before making a choice.

Skye headed through the plane, smiling politely at the military men, finally knocking on the cockpit door. She opened it and slipped inside, sitting down next to May who was silently piloting the BUS. It was a bit bizarre for Skye. Sitting next to this woman who’d become almost a surrogate mother for her in nearly three years, now knew nothing about her, had no history, no trust, nothing.

Finally Skye got the courage to speak.

“I know you don’t trust me. You think I’m a liability out in the field, that I’m not trained, I’m unpredictable. I probably have an ulterior motive for staying on the BUS. And you’re right - I do. And I _will_ tell you, I just can't right now, 'cause you’re gonna think I’m crazy. Crazier than aliens attacking New York. Even crazier than a demigod who can control thunder and lightning. I just need you to get me a meeting with Director Fury. You and he _need_ to hear what I have to say. I'm sure you can contact him through the encrypted line you have in here when I'm gone.”

May barely twitched, but Skye was observant enough and knew the woman's ticks to see that the statement had thrown her old S.O. off.

Skye stood up and made her way to the door. “And I’d watch out for Reyes' men. They’ll come for you first.”

Once she was gone, May blinked. Then did it twice more. She relaxed into her seat with a contemplative look on her face.

As Reyes' men began to settle in, Fitz and Simmons begin sifting through the data the DWARF connected to the holotable had collected so they could read and examine the specs of the 0-8-4.

“So should we work, or just continue to-”

“I’m saying, I said there would come a moment when we would regret the decision to go in the field. I didn’t think that would happen in week one.” Fitz talked over his partner. Simmons scoffed before looking more closely at the model of the 0-8-4 still in the wall.

“This seam in the sedimentary layers suggests a molten cave-in a few decades back.”

“Yeah, well this here-” Fitz holds a holograph of the control box inside of the 0-8-4 and drags it over in front of Simmons, “it’s optical amplification. Now, I think - well, I’m most likely dead-on-” Simmons can’t help rolling her eyes at his confidence, “that the tesseratic energy excites plasma with an inverse population of energy levels.”

“A laser.” Simmons concludes.

“A ray of . . . pure energy two terajoules. See the amplifier?” Fitz flipped the small holographic device control around for her to look at. “We’re lucky the drones didn’t trigger it while we were taking electromagnetic readings.” He waves his hand to remove the display covering of the holographic control box to see the pulsing energy.

“Skye was right. This is a weapon, powerful enough to-”

“Enough to melt through 50 feet of solid rock to bury itself. Imagine what it could do to a person.” Simmons voiced anxiously.

“Yeah, or an airplane, for example.” Fitz added nervously. They exchanged meaningful looks with one another.

Ward relaxed in the lounge area with a book, keeping an eye on two of Reyes' men playing cards with each other across the walkway. Skye brought out a bottle of alcohol and planted herself in front of the agent.

“Hunger Games?” She couldn’t help asking, teasing him.

“‘Matterhorn.’ One of the hundred books my S.O. gave me that I’m just getting around to.” Skye tilted her head with a curious look, as if trying to think through the initials. "S.O. - supervising officer." Ward explained.

“Got it. Hackers have lingo, too, but I’ll pick yours up.” Skye paused, thoughts racing.

If she did this right, she’d have to go through the next six months pretending to like and trust Ward - working with him, learning from him, being close to him. In all her training with May, she’d learned not how to box up her emotions and pain but to store them in the back of her mind and let out when she wanted, to fuel her energy and endurance. It was how Skye could physically be near him without wanting to throw up at the moment. But she didn’t want to.

God, she wanted to break the bottle over his head right now and stab him with the jagged end, but she couldn’t. It’d barely been 48 hours since she’d joined this team for a second time and she needed to keep a cool head so she could watch Reyes' men and try not to blow a hole in the side of the plane this time around. She took a breath.

“I feel like you and me - wrong foot.” Skye spoke to Ward. She dangled the bottle of alcohol in her hands. “Can I . . . buy you a drink?”

Ward chuckled softly before gesturing for her to sit down. She moved around the furniture to sit across from him as she tried to remember this conversation three years ago for her.

“What I said before - when I said the uprising was - whatever I said, a good thing. I don’t want you to think I’m oblivious. What I was talking about was the tweets.” She tried to hide a smile at his predictable quip that came next.

“Tweets. You trying to make things better or worse?” He asked with a smile. Skye shook her head at him pouring them each a glass then looked up to meet his eyes.

“Peruvians have organized for the first time in decades. Thousands of suffering people who have never met uniting over a common idea? It’s mind-blowing.” Skye smiled to herself, at her own passion. “And I don’t want to bring it up because I don’t want to see your hate-face,” she eyed him then kept going. “But . . . that’s what the Rising Tide is all about.”'

“Okay,” Ward said warily.

“Usually, one person doesn’t have the solution. But a hundred people with 1% of the solution - that’ll get it done. I think that’s beautiful - pieces solving a puzzle.” She told him offering him the glass of alcohol.

Ward considered her for a brief moment before letting out a breath and sitting up to lean forward, reaching for the glass.

“You and I see the world differently is all.” He says simply. Skye thought about that before taking a deep breath.

“I’ve never been in a war zone during a war, until today. That was crazy. I take it you’ve seen that a lot?”

Ward sighs, reaching over to set the glass down and Skye spots the red on his white shirt, noting that he hadn't changed out of it.

“Let me guess, that's classified." Skye says with a smile on her face and he huffs out a short chuckle before nodding. "I'm sorry that happened today." She tells him, pointing at the red mark on his shirt. "No wonder you were so pissed."

“I wasn’t pissed.” Ward said slowly, trying to think of how to say what was on his mind. “I was trained to be the whole solution - to eliminate variables. And today,” he glances over at Camila’s men still playing their cards but not touching their drinks. “They keep adding up.”

Skye watches him, her own eyes darting to her peripheral vision, watching them as well before she feels the motion the plane is making under her feet.

“We’re turning.”

“We’ve entered restricted airspace so we have to follow certain flight paths, for regulation.” Skye nods. “This plane is capable of fully automated flight, but May has to be on the stick herself tonight.”

Skye snorts. “You’ve got an S.O. May’s gotta be on the stick. Lot’s of good lingo on this plane.”

Ward gives her a small smile. “Yeah. We just can’t seem to understand each other.”

While Ward and Skye tried to work things out between them Coulson had concluded Camila’s little tour of the plane upstairs in his office, showing her his collectibles.

“First walkie-talkie wristwatch, 1936, Poland.” Coulson handed it over to her. “They only made twenty, I think. Still works.”

“I forgot, you’re such a sentimentalist, Phillip. Romanticizing history.” She walked over to a bookshelf with more memorabilia. He smiled to himself, putting the wristwatch back into it’s hooks on his desk.

“Yeah, most of it is glued down.” She glanced back at him. “There was an elegance to things back then.”

“There we agree.” She circled around him.

“With everything around us changing so quickly, it doesn’t hurt to have a few touchstones to the past. Reminds me what’s important.” Coulson says watching her as he leans on his desk.

“The last thing I want to do is to relive days gone by.” She turns to face him, grabbing the door and sliding it shut. “A few nights, maybe.” She eyes him flirtatiously.

“I see what you’re doing.” He says studying her, already calculating how long it’ll take to get to the rest of the team when he’s done.

“I’m reminiscing.” She says innocently. “This plane is such a step up from the R.V. we used to work out of when you were stationed in Cusco.”

“I don’t remember much working.” She chuckles. “I also don’t remember you being this direct.”

The smile stays on Camila’s face as she lingers near the door, trying to judge if she can keep him talking or not. Her men downstairs, on the other hand, definitely have Ward’s attention.

He watches them nod just slightly to each other. He turns his attention back to the woman in front of him. She watches his face understanding what’s coming next and automatically reaches for the bottle behind her.

“Skye, hand me the bottle.” He says conversationally. She can’t help the snarky comment that slips from her lips.

“Okay, turbo. But you’re still nursing the one you got.”

“I’m not the only one.” He tells her, his eyes still on the soldiers. Her face goes serious as she hopes FitzSimmons listened to her when she told them to lock the doors of the lab.

Back upstairs Camila is still trying to seduce Coulson.

“We’re stuck above the clouds for the next few hours. We might as well enjoy ourselves.” She says quietly with a coy look on her face. “We could make a few more memories to add to your collection. What do you think?”

“I think . . .” He stands up slowly, then steps over to her “Ward already knows you’ll have to eliminate May from the equation to have a chance. Which gives him about twenty seconds to get to her first.” He predicts.

Downstairs Reyes' men finally make their move.

They rush over and Ward stands up to confront them, pushing Skye past him and she runs, darting towards the cockpit as Ward takes on the two camouflage-clothed men. One of them throws a punch and Ward grabs the hand, slamming it onto the coffee table and breaking the bottle on top of it, getting a scream for his troubles. 

Skye appears in the small hallway to the cockpit as another of the soldiers attaches a small device connected to a drill onto the cockpit door. It beeps and the drill whirs but Skye jumps forward, throwing the alcohol onto the electronic device and shorting it out with a tiny explosion and smoking. Skye kicks hard at the drill, it clattering to the ground as Reyes' man spins to face her and she slams the glass in her hand into his head as he lunges for her. He shouts in pain, alerting May to her company outside and immediately she flips a switch, pressing a few buttons and takes off the headset opening the door inward and taking in the scene.

Skye, in the fighting stance May teaches her exactly a year from now, the man with blood dripping down his face from a gash on his temple, blinking rapidly as he rushes her.

May sticks out her leg, tripping him and he goes flying as Skye steps aside. It only takes a hard kick to the back of his head for the man to stay down. May glances back at the drill with a strange vial attached to it and the device and looks up without a word to Skye, thanking her silently. The younger girl nods her head and the two of them rush out to see Ward still fighting off his attackers.

He sends one flying over the couch, landing at their feet as they step out from the hallway and May leans down. With two quick hits, the second man is knocked out. Ward is taking care of the third. Skye counts them quickly.

“FitzSimmons.” She remembers too late.

Upstairs Camila whips out a knife but Coulson grabs her arm, twisting the knife out of her hands and throws her onto the couch as he runs out the door. Coulson comes rushing down the stairs to find Ward pinning one man down on the ground, but he, May and Skye staring at the monitor that shows the last soldier has Fitz in his grip with a scalpel pressed against his throat in the lab downstairs.

Reyes comes down the stairs, finding her men scattered and moaning, but moving and getting back up. May ushers Skye forward out of their way as she turns to face one, her fists raised, but she knows that Coulson will cooperate with Camila for Fitz.

Coulson turns to his old friend. “We were allies, we had history, when did you decide to throw that away?” He asks her.

“As soon as I saw your team.” She replies evenly.

She turns and nods her head at one of her men now standing again and he steps forward, with a broken piece of wood and swings it at May’s head from behind, knocking her unconscious. Skye grits her teeth, glaring at Camila as the man she hit with her glass grabs her viciously.

May and the others are gathered in a line and bound together behind the cars on the ramp. Camila keeps Coulson with her in the command center having him sitting down on the ground and tied to a post of the counter above him, while another one of her men takes over piloting the plane. Reyes' man punches Coulson hard enough to draw blood and he spits it out as she walks around the holotable to face him.

“The reason I’m still alive is because you need me to verify the change of routes for your pilot when H.Q. calls in any minute now.”

“I’d appreciate that.”

“But if I don’t, SHIELD will shoot this aircraft out of the sky. That’ll take the 0-8-4 out of your hands. Maybe I should let them.”

“Oh, no, I think you’ll make the calls. You already handed me your plane for the life of one of your little lab rats. If I open the cargo hold, you’ll lose them all. And you’re such a sentimentalist.” She looks down at him condescendingly.

In the cargo hold, May is still unconscious while the others play at blaming themselves instead of trying to find a solution to the problem they face.

“This is my fault.” Fitz says looking at Simmons. “Should have learned Kung Fu.”

“Oh, yeah, but I shouldn’t have pushed you into the field in the first place. You weren’t ready.” Simmons says easily but Fitz scowls at that.

“Uh, we - _we_ weren’t ready-”

“It was my job to make a proper threat assessment."

“I thought that I told you guys to lock yourselves into the lab!” Skye scolded the scientists. They turned to her as one.

“Yeah, how did you know they would come for us?” Fitz asks.

“Did you know this was gonna happen?” Simmons questions her.

Skye sighs, thinking quickly to give them a short and honest explanation.

“Since they stepped on this plane, they’ve been watching everything and everyone.” She says quietly. “With Reyes’ motivation and her history with Coulson, it wasn’t a stretch to see she was trying to play him for the 0-8-4. And he was letting her do it, I just don’t know why. I knew they were gonna make a play, I just hoped it wouldn’t get very far. I was hoping Coulson was in more control of it than I thought he was.” Skye pauses before diverting their attention to someone else. “But this wouldn’t have happened if Agent May wasn’t on the stick. She would’ve busted out some of her ninja know-how sooner.”

Fitz stops his line of questions at her last statement. “Agent May? No, no. No. She transferred from administration.”

“Well, I’ve seen her destroy a guy, so . . .” Skye tells them. They all look to Ward for confirmation. He sucks in a breath.

“You’ve heard of the Cavalry.”

“Yeah.” FitzSimmons say.

“Wh—everyone at the Academy talks about st—” Fitz stops short.

“She’s the Cavalry!” FitzSimmons say excitedly.

“I told you never to call me that!” May’s voice drawls towards them and they all look down at her.

“I can’t believe it! Oh, we’re sure to get out of here now.” Simmons says relieved then glances back down at May. “Um, how do we get out of here?”

The agent in question begins to sit up as she struggles with her bonds. “Can’t go through the doors. They’re bolted, tied to the pressurization lines.” She glances over at the scientists. “You two geniuses have nothing?” FitzSimmons look at each other before Fitz frowns.

“Yeah, well it’s hard to concentrate in these intense situations.”

“Hey,” Ward says in a soft voice. “Don’t freeze up. Take a breath. You don’t need to come up with the whole solution. Just part of it, right?” He asks this last part to Skye.

“Yeah, pieces solving a puzzle.” She murmurs, resigned to what they’re gonna have to do.

Meanwhile, Coulson is trying to keep Camila talking so as to give his team time to escape and take back the plane.

“You knew this was a weapon all along.”

“But you got to it first. I had to play nice. Yes, Coulson,” She looks smugly at him as she leans against the holotable. “For once, I’m actually ahead of you. My country commissioned that weapon decades ago. After the fall of Hydra, many scientists followed their Nazi friends to hide on this side of the world.” She paces as she talks, happy to finally speak the truth.

“German engineering,” Coulson recalls Fitz’s comments and manages to loosen his bonds enough that he can slip his hands through when he wants.

“The weapon was lost in a clash in the jungle, until today. With it, we’ll end the rebel uprising and finally stabilize my country.”

“You mean rule your country.”

“You stay in your borders, I’ll stay in mine.”

“Those borders are disappearing. Aliens descended on New York, remember? They don’t care whose colors you wear, they just care who’s in the way. We should be working together, not fighting.”

Down in the cargo hold, Skye finishes explaining her idea and Simmons is appalled.

“Well, that’s clearly the worst idea we’ve heard yet.”

“But it could work.” Skye persists.

“Reyes is gonna kills us when we land, regardless, and blame it on rebels. This way we have a fighting chance.” Ward supports Skye. “I’ll take it. What’s first?”

“We can’t get upstairs without going in the lab.” Fitz says.

“And the only way to release the lab doors is from upstairs.”

“The first thing is we’re tied to the cargo door.” Skye says then turns to May who in turn swings her shoulders and a cracking pop is heard.

“What the hell was that?” Fitz winces.

“Her wrist.” Ward says.

It only takes minutes before their guard comes back and he squints, frowning and counting his hostages. It takes him too long to realize there’s one missing.

May, who is hanging from the railing above the lab, swings her legs up and over, clamping around his neck and then dropping them back towards the ground, bringing him with her. He falls to the cargo ramp with a grunt, but is out cold. May lands on her feet behind him and pops her wrist back into place.

“What’s next?” She asks.

Upstairs, Reyes is still reminiscing with Coulson.

“Was it 11 years ago, now? You swooped in with SHIELD with so much confidence, so much mystery. You had a hundred men at your disposal. And now-”

“A hand-picked team. And yes, they’re that good.” Coulson brags to her.

“Oh Phil,” Camila says sympathetically. “You’re not even aware. Your renewed idealism, your collectibles, your airborne mancave, surrounding yourself with young, attractive agents - you’re having a mid-life crisis.” She’s squatting down at his level and pats him almost comfortingly on the leg.

“More an afterlife thing, really.” Coulson quips.

“And I’m not even going to mention the red corvette!” Camila says standing and walking away, before facing him again.

“Her name’s Lola.” Coulson defends his car proudly.

Camila laughs, sitting down in the corner, “Of course it is. It’s textbook. You built this team so you could feel relevant - to feel needed.”

“They don’t need me.” Coulson keeps talking. “They need time.”

“Well, time is not on their side.” She replies.

“No, but you gave them something better - a common enemy.” Coulson smirks at her.

Downstairs the entire team is free from their bonds, standing in front of the lab.

“Okay, we’re sure, right? Everyone’s sure?” Skye confirms.

“We’re all on board.” Simmons assures her.

“Yeah, let’s do this fast.” Fitz says.

“No turning back. No freezing up.” Ward tells them.

“Because if we do . . .”

“All of us die.” Ward finishes for Fitz.

“We know.” Simmons says nervously.

“All right.” Ward says and the engine to the SHIELD truck revs. They all turn to see May standing in the open drivers doorway.

“You guys talk a lot.” She says.

The team moves out of the way as she drives the truck and crashes through the locked lab doors.

Everyone on the plane can feel the crash and Reyes orders her men in Spanish not to go down there, she knows it’s what the team wants.

Meanwhile, Simmons is unscrewing bolts to open ventilation shaft. Fitz fetches his DWARF and it’s tablet controller and Skye opens a metal cabinet looking for harnesses and ropes they can latch themselves into. May immediately goes for the far door and pushes it open with her strength so she can head straight for the cockpit. Ward helps create harnesses and ties Skye and FitzSimmons together in preparation for what’s about to happen. At the same time, Fitz controls his DWARF and flies it into the plane’s ventilation system.

Camila stays in the command center waiting and then a voice comes through the radio.

“ _SHIELD 6-1-6 we have radar contact. Requesting confirmation on a change in course. Over.”_

Camila draws her gun and points it at Coulson.

“Answer it or they all learn what a 30,000-foot drop feels like.”

“ _Agent Coulson are you there? You have course confirmation. You are cleared direct to the Slingshot._ ” The SHIELD agent at H.Q. tells him.

Coulson loosens his bonds, ready to break out of his bonds as Camila looks towards the holotable. Then he recognizes the familiar sound of Fitz’s DWARF flying around and glances to the left, seeing it flying low through the lounge area towards the 0-8-4 sitting on the coffee table. Correctly guessing his team’s plan, Coulson quickly wraps his bonds around his arm and clings to the post behind him.

“ _Agent Coulson! Everything alright up there? We heard you had a little dustup on the ground._ ”

Camila turns back to him, the gun only a few inches from his forehead.

“Yeah, we’re all good. It’s gonna be blue skies from here on out.” Coulson tells H.Q.

The rest of the team, line up outside of the door upstairs, waiting for Fitz who is tapping at his control tablet to the DWARF.

“Simmons,” He addresses her. “Forget what I said before. _This_ is the moment that we’ll regret.”

He taps a final command and the DWARF that is hovering above the 0-8-4 weapon emits a pulse of energy at the right point of contact and the blue lines of the device glow stronger as it seems to power up, flashing before it emits a bright ray of energy and then pulverizes a chair and the wall of the plane behind it. A hole appears in the side of the plane and the winds outside sucks a soldier out into the sky.

Coulson is luckily hanging on by his ropes, even though the wind is trying to suck him out of the plane, while Camila has been knocked out of her seat.

There’s a ding and then a light on the panel next to the door the team's outside of turns green.

"It worked!” Skye says happily.

“The drop in cabin pressure released the doors.” Simmons explains to Ward.

He nods. “I’ll take care of the soldiers. You guys get to the 0-8-4.”

“And Coulson?” Fitz asks.

“Let’s hope he can handle himself.” Ward says then yanks the door open.

One of Reyes' men is desperately hanging on to the outside of the command center and starts shooting at them.

“Get back!” Ward shouts to the others.

The man rushes for Ward and jumps up onto the couch. Ward blocks his punches and knocks him off his feet. He jumps over the back onto the cushions and the gun the other man is pointing at him, jumping to his side and kicking the man away from him. The first soldier gets back to his feet but Ward swings off the couch and throws him onto it, yanking the seatbelt around his arms to pin him down.

“Go now! Find the 0-8-4!” He yells above the winds to his team and they struggle to get through the hallway. The other soldier comes back, knocking Ward down as the team makes their way around the couch.

Meanwhile, the last soldier who is piloting the plane, struggles to keep the plane flying upright. May comes through the cockpit door and the soldier stands up to confront her. She blocks his swing and with one solid blow he’s thrown back against the controls and the plane begins to nosedive.

FitzSimmons and Skye are knocked to the ground while Ward continues to grapple with the two soldiers. Coulson is still in the air, hanging onto the ripe tied to the post in the command center.

“Coulson!” Camila shouts as she’s dragged across the ground toward the hole. They reach for each other and manage to grab on tightly.

“Hold on! It’s gonna be okay!” Coulson uses his strength to drag her back towards him and the command center.

Ward is using a seatbelt from the couch to stop from being sucked out the plane but continues fighting one of the soldiers.

Simmons reaches for the alien weapon which had been sucked up and stuck in the wall. She heaves it out, stumbling with the weight but manages to stay on her feet, squinting through her hair whipping around.

“I’ve got it!”

“Fitz, reel us back in!” Skye yells.

“I’ve got you!" He reassures them.

A flyer lands on Skye’s face and she rips it away, glancing down at it and remembering what she can do to help. She reads it quickly and then unbuckles herself from Fitz and Simmons.

“What are you doing?” Simmons asks. “We need your help!”

“Trust me!” Skye shouts back at them and crawls away.

Coulson helps Camilla back into the command center and ties her to the post he was previously bound to.

“Don’t want you to know what a 30,000-foot drop feels like!” He yells at her.

Meanwhile, May leans forward and with two more blows knocks the soldier to the ground so she can lean over and attempt to level out the plane. But the soldier gets back to his feet and grabs her by the head, tearing her away from the controls. She twists out of his grip easily, punching him in the gut so he’s out of breath, grabbing his head and slamming him into the controls to daze him, kicks him behind the leg so he drops to his knees and then slams his head against the cabin wall, knocking him unconscious. She drops into the pilot’s seat and takes control of the plane once more.

Ward and one of the soldiers are fighting for control but the soldier is repeatedly hitting his wound and he can’t help wincing.

At the same time, Skye is crawling behind the seats, opening a red cabinet and dragging something thick and yellow from it. The other soldier manages to grab hold of the rope tying FitzSimmons together, knocking her off her feet. Fitz rushes to get to her first.

“Cut him loose!” Simmons tells Fitz and they both unbuckle their harnesses from the rope, sending the soldier flying back with no weight to anchor him down. He knocks back into Ward and the other soldier behind the command center too close to the hole in the plane.

“Sorry!” 

“Sorry, Ward!” Fitz and Simmons apologize over the noise. He can’t pay attention to them as he and the soldier are clinging to each other while Ward hangs onto the doorway of the command center. The soldier lunges forward for a better grip on Ward's arm as Ward himself hangs onto the camouflage shirt.

"Hold on!" Ward shouts, but the soldier's shirt rips and he goes flying from Ward's grip out the side of the plane.

Skye finally hits a button and the yellow material inflates into a big yellow raft that is sucked towards the hole and instead is just big enough to block Ward from flying out the plane next. He drops to the ground and the remaining soldier crawls for a gun but Coulson steps on his hand.

He punches him out and grabs the gun. Skye watches as Ward leans against the yellow raft tiredly and FitzSimmons lift themselves up from behind the couch again to check on the damage to the rest of the plane.

Skye offers her hand to Ward and she helps him to his feet. “I read the safety pamphlet.” She tells him.

“I think you might be the first.” He tells her wryly. They all meet Coulson at the bar outside of the command center.

“No other way in, huh?” He asks his team, setting a broken glass down on the bar. "I was just starting to warm up to this place." Skye reaches for a coaster and places it underneath the broken glass. Coulson can't help smiling at her as she drops into a stool.

"The 0-8-4 is cooling and stable." Fitz tells them through his panting. "But we should call H.Q. and get it to the Slingshot as soon as possible."

Coulson turns to Camila who is listening to them angrily. "Told you they were good." He grins down at her.

When they finally land in the "classified location" Coulson examines his car, making sure nothing terrible happened to it.

"Not a scratch," Skye observes walking over to him, "but your plane's totaled. I hope SHIELD insurance covers hijackings."

"Sure under 'incidentals.'" Coulson jokes. Skye laughs tiredly then remembers her script.

"What exactly am I signing up for?" She asks.

"Like I said, front row seat to the craziest show on Earth."

 _You got that right._ Skye can't help thinking. "Yeah, but I didn't expect the show to get this crazy, this fast. All for an object you're just gonna destroy." She gestures out towards the rocket launcher.

"Slingshot is protocol." Coulson tells her. "A weapon like the 0-8-4 is too dangerous for any person or country to have. People like Reyes would always be after it." Coulson wets a handkerchief with his tongue and cleans Lola's hood with it.

"What happened with Reyes anyway?" Skye asks him.

"She's being held at a SHIELD detainment facility. I expect the Peruvian government will negotiate for her release. She probably won't spend much time in jail."

"No, I mean what happened with you and Reyes?" She says it this time laced with double meaning. "You guys totally did it back in the day, right?" Skye grins at him.

"That's classified." He cocks an eyebrow at her and she scoffs at him.

"Looks like Skye might end up as more than just a consultant, despite our reservations." Ward says to May as he watches Coulson walk away from her. "She could turn into a solid asset, with some serious work." Ward thinks out loud.

May turns to him, assessing him, trying to figure out his real reasons for wanting Skye close to him.

"Well, if she wants to be a SHIELD agent, she'll need a supervising officer." May says, glancing at Skye leaning against the supplies. "Someone disciplined. Someone good." Ward catches May's look and understands instantly.

"All right. I'll do it." He pauses thinking for a moment. "Just to clarify, you were, uh, talking about me, right?" May hides her smile as she and Ward continue putting away gear.

"We blew up a plane." Fitz says to Simmons proudly as they come down the stairs with a cooler.

"I had a new experience." Simmons says happily.

"Eat that Professor Vaughn." Fitz continues, ignoring Simmons.

" _You_ had a new experience. But it was new for _all_ of us." She sounds excited about it.

"They're happy." May observes. Fitz glances back at the rest of them.

"Hey, guys, come on. You don't want to miss this."

He and Simmons sit down on the open ramp and the others file down after them, sitting down with them to watch the facility miles out get ready to launch the 0-8-4 into outer space.

"So it'll take about 180 days to reach the sun. Now yes, of course it would've been faster if they'd used hydrogen-fueled APUs, but they're having fun."

"How many of those have you guys had?" Sky asks as the others all grab beers from the cooler and sit down.

"Skye," Simmons laughs, trying to seem more experienced than she is. "It's important when in the field to unwind from time to time."

"Yeah, yeah. Especially after a hard day of everyone almost dying." Fitz says enthusiastically.

"Which doesn't happen every day, right? It's an anomaly - an irregularity. Not . . . the norm." Simmons looks up at Coulson warily as he paces over to the side.

"Speaking of 'not the norm.' Whose idea was it to blow a hole in the plane?" Coulson asks seriously.

Everyone looks up nervously at him while Skye who is still standing takes the lead. "Well, May said that the doors were tied to the pressurization so I thought-"

"So  _we_ thought, it was the only way to release them." Simmons concludes for Skye, trying to take the heat off of her.

"It was everyone's idea sir." Ward speaks up.

"Yes, it's quite genius, really." Fitz says.

"Nice work." Coulson says and Skye narrows her eyes at him, finally understanding the entire case had been about building relations with each other and acting like a team.

" _All clear for liftoff_." A voice comes over the intercom."

"Oh, time for blastoff." Fitz says excitedly. "Launching in three . . . two . . ." He mimics and right on cue a rocket launches from the base miles out from them so they don't get any kickback. "The trajectory will take it beyond the Lagrange point so that it doesn't hit Herschel."

"Yeah, and there haven't been any coronal mass ejections, so it shouldn't lose telemetry." Simmons agrees with him.

"Guys, English." Ward says tiredly.

They all watch the rocket together as a team.

Skye's cell phone buzzes in her pocket and she takes it out reading the familiar text.

 _> Rising Tide in a holding pattern_  
_> Planning to go dark_  
_ >What is your status?_

_> >Reply:_

She thinks about it for a minute, taking a step back from the rest of the team and Coulson notices. She frowns down at her phone then types four words.

_> >Reply: No Go. I'm Out._

She tucks the 2013 phone back into her pocket and sighs, releasing the stress of one problem out of her system before training her eyes back on the rocket in the sky.

 

**THE NEXT DAY:**

"Really? _Really_ , Coulson?" Fury asks the man as they stand in the wreckage of the lounge area on the BUS. "Six _days_? It only took you _six days_ to take a completely renovated piece of state-of-the-art machinery and turn it into _scrap_?"

"My team acted with my authority." Coulson takes the scolding easily.

"Don't talk to me about _authority_. Do you know how much this plane cost? It's got a bar?" Fury walks over, admiring it. "A really nice one. Talking to me about _authority_."  He mutters, turning back to Coulson and striding back over to him. "You know I have the authority to downgrade your ass to a Winnebago."

"I'm aware of that sir."

"Well, I want it fixed, _just_ like you found it!" Fury says pointing his finger in Coulson's face. "So, don't have FitzSimmons, going making modifications, like a-a-a-a . . . damn fish tank."

"Yes, sir."

"And the new girl - she's a risk."

"I know, sir."

"You _know_ , sir." He huffs and walks past Coulson. "How's Lola?" Coulson smiles to himself.

"She's fine, sir. Thanks for asking."

"Talking to me about _authority_." Fury shakes his head at himself heading for the cockpit.

Coulson puts his finger to his ear to speak through the coms. "Yeah, we're gonna have to kill the fish tank."

Fury opens the cockpit door to find Agent May already there overseeing a couple of construction men working on loose paneling and controls. Fury glares at them and they scatter.

"Are we-"

"We're clear, sir. No bugs or anything." May stands in front of the chairs, in an at-ease position while Fury leans against the cockpit wall.

"Alright, what was so important-"

"Skye, the hacker? She wanted to meet with you. Said she had things we _both_ needed to hear."

"So?"

"Sir, she's hasn't been in my cockpit since she step foot on this plane, and the first time she does she tells me to contact you through my encrypted hard line."

Fury is silent at that but nods his head. "What's your take on her?"

May thinks for a long moment before speaking shortly and succinctly. "I think she understands the value of a secret even though she joined the Rising Tide. I think she's been trained by a SHIELD agent. I also think she has a lot of secrets that she's willing to share with us. She seems to know things that will happen before they do. Everything she does, everything she says is well calculated and thought out."

"You think she's Gifted." Fury assumes quietly and May nods.

"She has better senses than anyone I've ever met, but deliberately makes my team underestimate her."

"Alright, let's set something up before the plane is completely repaired. I'll stick around for another forty-eight hours. Get her alone and bring her to me." Fury orders.

May nods to him and he turns towards the door.

"Sir?" Fury looks back. "I think she knows about Coulson."

Fury's lips tighten and he sighs. "Thanks for the warning."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, what'd you guys think?
> 
> Should I have them rush off for their next case? Or should I have a short 3rd chapter with just Fury and Skye's meeting?
> 
> Thanks for the feedback guys.  
> Any and all comments and critique are welcome 
> 
> :D


	3. Information Trips

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> May manages to get Skye alone so she can meet with Fury and secrets come out on both sides. But Fury isn't the only one who needs to know what happens in the future.
> 
> There are at least five people Skye has to meet to make sure that certain things don't happen in the future. But can she make it happen in the short amount of time she's given?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sooooo . . . I'm sorry! It's been at least a good month since I've updated and I apologize for that. I had a perfect image of how short this chapter would be and who would meet with who and then I realized I needed more things to happen before I have Skye move forward with the team. So I've been editing and editing and writing more and more and it morphed into this.
> 
> I'm planning for two separate meetings:
> 
> One with Fury and May and Coulson - here :)  
> One with the Avengers - in a later chapter where everyone can know just about everything.
> 
> Let me know what you guys think :D

 

It was the day after Fury came to the Slingshot to scold Coulson for wrecking his prized plane, that May managed to corner Skye in her very small bunk on the military-grade base.

"We need to talk." May said, closing and locking the door. Skye straightens up on her bed, with her laptop still sitting on her legs.

"Is it about Fury? Is he still here? I heard he chewed out Coulson for wrecking the plane." Skye says a bit nervously.

May moves closer, studying the girl in front of her. "What do you know about Coulson?" The words fall before she can silence them. May swallows hard to keep the next set of questions from emerging as she stands in front of Skye, tall, trying to seem intimidating.

Skye sighs, looking up at May and setting her laptop aside. "I know you love SHIELD, you believe in what they do, the good they inspire. I also know that no matter what you tell Fury or the rest of SHIELD, your first loyalty is to the people you believe in, which begin and end with Coulson." Skye chews on her lip for a minute as May waits her out. "Look, he is the best man I know." She says slowly then meets May's eyes. "And despite all the evidence that tells you not to, Coulson deserves to know what happened to him. How long he was really dead for, the drug they used to bring him back."

May glares down at the girl, trying to figure out what to do with her, before finally coming to a decision.

"Come with me." She says and Skye stands up as May turns and unlocks the door. With a few quick taps, Skye shoots out a text and hides her phone into the heavy long left sleeve of her sweatshirt hoodie.

The two women weave their way through the numerous hallways of the Slingshot base until finally arriving at a nondescript office. May opens the door for her and Skye steps inside, slyly tapping away at her phone again before slipping it into her hoodie pocket. May follows, closing and locking the door after her.

Fury stands looking out the large bay window behind the desk and he turns. His entire presence demanding respect and a healthy dose of fear, from the dark wardrobe to the combat boots to the eyepatch and his hardened expression. But Skye doesn't let it get to her.

She takes a deep breath and sits down.

"So, you're Skye." Fury turns to look at her. "The hacker consultant, Coulson brought on."

"That's me." She nods slowly to him. He stares her down, studying her. Just as he opens his mouth Skye cuts him off. "Would you mind waiting just - one more minute? And before you panic-" He and May both stiffen. "I just texted Coulson where I am. He needs to hear this too."

May and Fury exchange a look before she relaxes into a parade rest stance. Fury's dark eyes narrow but he doesn't do or say anything.

Skye pulls out her phone and starts scrolling through her contacts, trying to figure out a game plan of who she needs to see first after this conversation takes place.

It doesn't take long before the doorknob rattles and then a knock comes.

"Skye? What's going on?" Coulson's voice comes through the door.

May slowly unlocks and opens the door. Coulson steps through, confusion and concern plain on his face when he sees Skye sitting down until his eyes meet Fury's. He straightens and his expression goes blank.

"Sir, whatever Skye did-"

"This isn't about what I did, AC it's about what _going_ to happen." Skye interrupts him and he frowns at her.

"So, what _is_ going to happen? Why am I here?" Fury asks her as Coulson stands between his partner and his boss, facing the young hacker.

"Because your secrets have already cost this planet once, and they're about to do it again, this time with much worse results." She tells him.

"What are you talking about?" He asks carefully, watching her.

"Look, there are more people I need to speak to about this and I don't know everything, but you should all know . . . SHIELD has been compromised."

Her three superiors all stiffen at her words.

"But you already know that, or at least you have suspicions about it." Skye tells him, watching him carefully and Fury's eyes narrow at her.

"And what exactly are you basing that on?"

Skye takes a deep breath. "The fact that I'm from the future."

There's silence and Fury's eyes meet first Coulson's then May's, each time exchanging a disbelieving look but Skye plows on ahead.

"The first thing you need to do is stop trusting your World Security Council. They've been compromised too. If you need funding, go to Stark. You know he could afford it even if his massive ego hurts your pride."

"Are you out of your mind?" Fury's voice raises just slightly but Skye doesn't even blink.

"No, but the second thing you're gonna want to do, is move the Iliad to a more secure location until you can have Thor take the Monolith off-world. Third, you need to terminate Project Insight. It's gonna be used against you and you're gonna have Captain America and the Black Widow expose all of SHIELD's dirty little secrets in order to stop it from happening in the first place."

Fury freezes at that and glares down at her with a vengeance Skye has never seen. He takes a threatening step towards her with his mouth open but she interrupts his train of thought.

"Look I get that this sounds crazy, but a week ago it was the year 2016 for me and I had _much_ bigger problems than you. I figure this is my chance at being able to fix everything - and I do mean _everything_. Project Insight, the Winter Soldier, Stark's Ultron program, Von Strucker and the Maximoff twins, Afterlife, Thor and his stupid war against the Dark Elves over that Aether, even my parents and Coulson's bionic hand. I have a chance to change the world and I'm trying to do that through _you_."

Fury stares hard at her, trying to determine if she's telling the truth or not and Skye lets out a long breath.

"You want us to believe that you're from the year 2016 and traveled back in time to stop certain events from happening?" May finally spoke up.

"No," Skye tells them. "Because I have no idea how I did it. And I can't give you personal anecdotes about your histories, things that only you three would know because even though you trained me," She turns to May. "And I met your ex-husband, we don't exactly share." May starts at that statement but Skye turns to Coulson. "And I never met Audrey, but I do know you believe in SHIELD enough to know you can never truly have the life you wanted with her." Coulson is stunned at her words as Skye turns back to Fury. "And everything I know about you I read in your SHIELD file. I know that you've been under the World Security Council's thumb for a long time and you're only just now beginning to see where your trust has been taken advantage of."

Skye stares up at Fury for a long moment before he finally asks her, "What are you?"

"That, I'm gonna have to wait til I can speak to everyone about." She says in a resigned tone.

"What do you mean everyone?" May says sharply.

"I mean, once I'm in front of the Avengers, Commander Hill, and you three, I'll answer any and all questions I can about what I know of the future for all of you."

"That's _not_ gonna happen." Fury frowned down at her.

"Listen Pirate," Skye stood up angrily. "This," she circles her finger to the four of them, "was just a courtesy call. There are other people I have to talk to, other things I need to research _in depth_ before I actually attempt to change anything, but I would appreciate any support you could give. I'm not gonna beg and I'm certainly not gonna share what info I do have with you, if you decide to be a jackass about this."

"Skye-" May starts but the girl in question shakes her head.

"No, May. If you guys want my help against the enemies of _your_ future, you're gonna have to let go of the TAHITI program's secret and let the Avengers know Coulson is alive so I can tell you everything I know."

Fury and May stare at her for a long moment as Coulson turns to his boss.

"The _TAHITI Program_ , sir?" He asks accusingly. Fury sighs before turning to one of the few people he trusts.

"You died, Phil. You were dead for eight days, before you were brought back to life." He tells him bluntly.

"How?" Coulson questions shocked.

"There's a medical facility called the Guest House that contains an alien corpse. It was experimented on and the bodily fluids were drained to create drugs that had full cellular regenerative properties including one called GH-325." Skye answers for Fury and he glares at her while Coulson and May both look stunned at the information she was revealing. "You actually led an experimental program, TAHITI, where they tested the GH-325 on six different SHIELD agents with terminal illnesses." She tells Coulson. "The drug healed them completely, but it also implanted fragments of genetic memories of the alien host onto the patients' brains. That caused them to deteriorate mentally resulting in them displaying hypergraphia, aphasia, catatonia, or just complete psychosis - and they couldn't stop drawing symbols. So you used a Memory Overwriting Machine to scrub their brains and give them new lives. And even though it was _your_ recommendation to terminate the project, Fury used it to bring you back to life, including wiping your memories of your role in Project TAHITI and giving you new pleasant memories because, the procedures themselves, were traumatic. They had to keep you conscious on the table while they rewrote your memories. It was so painful that, you kept begging them to let you die." Skye finished quietly.

"Stop." May said in a tense voice and Skye couldn't help looking apologetically to her.

"Tell him." Skye urged May and the older woman stared down the young hacker.

"Tell me what? What else is there?" Coulson asks weakly.

Fury takes a breath and steps in. "Because of the noted side effects of the drugs, I went to May first and asked her to evaluate what was needed and gave me the assessment."

"I gave him the parameters that you needed for your unit." May said with a deceptive calm to her tone.

"Someone who could repair your body, a technician who could reprogram your brain, and a specialist to help her put you down if it had to be done." Skye said softly.

"Coulson-"

"Don't!" Coulson fought not to raise his voice as his mind started to race. "I need a minute." He circled around the three others and paced against the far wall.

After a few long moments, Skye stepped forward.

"Coulson, look at me, I need you to listen."

"Why should I?" He asked pausing in his steps but not quite looking at her.

"Because even though you _barely_ know me, I _know_ you. You're strong and idealistic and want to save the world. You look at people and see the light _and_ the darkness, the good and the bad decisions they've made - and still, _every_ single time, you choose to focus on the _good_ in them, on their potential to _be_ good, and you inspire others to do the same! That's why Fury brought you back. It's why May is here _supporting_ you while you lead an elite team to take on the rest of the world, to save the individuals living in it. You don't have to like what they did, you can even hate them a little, but you do have to work with them. Take your time to come to terms with what's happened, but eventually you _will_ forgive them."

Everyone stares at the hacker in shock and a little bit of awe, and Skye self-consciously tucks a strand of hair behind her ear, her eyes darting around her.

"Am I really that predictable?" Coulson asks to break the ice and she smiles wryly at him.

"Only to those who know you." She answers. "Including the Avengers." She says pointedly to Fury and he sighs. 

"Alright. I'll try to collect the team within the next few weeks so we can all meet. In the meantime I will need something from you."

Skye nodded to him, sliding two fingers into her bra and taking out a microchip, offering it to him. "Since I got back, I began compiling as much information as I could about what I know. This is a list of people you _cannot_ trust. At the top of that list is Gideon Malick, Senator Alexander Pierce, your own prized STRIKE team, and the majority of your level 8, 9, and 10 agents."

"Seriously? That many?" May breathed.

"If they're not SHIELD, what are they?" Coulson asked.

"HYDRA." Skye said disgustedly. "Their organization has been around much longer than WWII. And after the Red Skull fell, Arnim Zola took up his mantle and when he was recruited to the S.S.R. under Operation: Paperclip, he began working at infiltrating SHIELD when Peggy Carter and Howard Stark founded it. They've been among us this whole time."

Fury let out a low breath. "I've had my suspicions since the Battle of New York, but I never imagined . . . Malick and Pierce have _both_ been on my ass about different issues. I just thought-"

"You _can't_ trust them. Pierce has worked with Zola from the very beginning on Project Insight and Malick knows the origin and true history of HYDRA - most of which have to do with that Monolith on the Iliad. There are other current heads of HYDRA that are on that list and I dug up as much dirt as I can so that you can put them in a cell, or at least enough to release on the dark web and have others bury them in the ground for it." She said with such contempt it shocked May, Fury and Coulson.

"You're still holding back." Coulson noticed and Skye nodded slowly to her.

"There are still things I have to explain, other projects you need to be aware of that I can't talk about right now. But you should know," Skye turns to her team leader and old S.O. "You can't trust Ward."

"He's HYDRA?" May asked surprised. Skye hesitated.

"John Garrett is and he saved Ward's life and gave him training and a purpose. Ward thinks he owes Garrett for that. He's loyal to Garrett, through and through."

"If SHIELD fell during your timeline because of these people, I need to strengthen our core facilities with those I trust." Fury thought out loud.

Skye nodded pointing at the microchip she gave him. "That list will get you started. I also put a team of mercenaries on there that have ties to SHIELD that you can use to check up on your other operations and start rooting out traitors. I'd start with your East African headquarters and the Treehouse. Those two locations fell easily when Hydra came out into the open the first time around. Hopefully if you start early in getting rid of the double agents, we'll have a better chance exposing them and keeping SHIELD in a position of power."

"What happened to SHIELD when HYDRA revealed themselves?" Coulson asked and Skye looked disappointedly at the ground before meeting his gaze again.

"It was completely destabilized. The government declared us a terrorist organization and those that were left, they tried hunting down. Everyone thought you were dead," Skye tells Fury and he doesn't look surprised. "HYDRA has the Winter Soldier in their arsenal and what's worse it's someone that we know, someone that Captain America knows. Pierce sent him after you, and you faked your death. Helped the Captain and Black Widow and their friend load all of HYDRA and SHIELD's secrets onto the web and destroyed Project Insight's helicarriers. Then you came for Coulson. Gave him your toolbox and told him to start over. Be the new director of SHIELD and recreate it from the ground up in one of your secret bases."

"Coulson, the director?" May can't help smiling. Skye turned to her.

"You lost his trust for a while when he figured out you knew about the TAHITI Project and didn't tell him. But you earned it back eventually and you've always been his right hand. Just like Coulson is your right eye." She said to Fury.

They were all silent for a moment, Skye moving her hair behind her ear self-consciously before Fury stepped up to her.

"Thank you." He told her and Skye stared at him, stunned at the words that just crossed his lips. "With your help, we'll be able to root out HYDRA and expose their evils to the world."

"The right way." She says and he smiles wryly at her.

"You're just like Coulson."

"He's the only real father figure I've ever had in my life." She turned to Coulson. "You were the first one to ever care about me for me and not just for my skills." Skye admits.

Fury turns away thinking out loud. "Well, I'm going to start putting plans together. I'll speak with Stark, make sure he can-"

Skye put a hand to her head, her vision swimming as a pressure seemed to appear and increase inside her temple. She could hear voices speaking, only getting snippets and flashes as, even with her eyes closed, colors and figures began to appear forming awful scenes inside her mind - most of them were of _her_ looking pale and sickly, acting against her team. The last one always lingered in her mind, Lincoln's voice weakly cutting off at the last word.

"Skye. Skye!" May grabbed her shoulder shaking her and the younger girl swayed in her spot as she opened her eyes, the scenes disappearing.

Fury looked down at her concern lining his features and Coulson leaned down, trying to draw Skye's unfocused gaze to his own.

"Sorry." Skye shook her head, "I, uh. I've been having weird dreams since I got back. I think they're visions of what would have happened if I hadn't traveled through time. Except now they're manifesting during the day. That's not pleasant." Skye couldn't help wincing at the current headache.

"Are you okay?" Coulson asked.

"Yeah, I should be okay. I think it might just be a side effect of traveling through time, that or just the aftermath of that damn Monolith affecting me."

"Wait a second, that alien rock - Monolith or whatever - is what you used to travel through time?" Fury asked curiously and Skye looked up, alarmed at his eager tone.

"No, but the way it reacted to me-" Skye sighed heavily. "Look I've barely touched on just a few of the things that we need to talk about. That Monolith currently on the Iliad is one of them. But you _cannot_ go near it, do you understand me?" Skye told him as a warning. "It's too dangerous and this is one of the times that I need you to actually _listen_ to what I'm telling you and not experiment on it, touch it, or open the damn cage to that rock! Wait til Thor gets here, I'll explain everything you want to know then. Okay?"

He, Coulson, and May glanced at each other in surprise but the Director nodded to Skye. "Alright, we won't touch it. We'll move the Iliad to a more secure location."

Skye heaved a breath in relief, still rubbing her forehead because of the irritating headache. "I need some time off between cases. Possibly now, there's a couple people I need to see before I can talk to Thor. I need more information, stuff that I can't find on the dark web or hacking into different secure systems."

"When?" Fury asks her and she contemplates for a moment.

"The plane won't be fixed for at least another week or so." She muttered to herself before she turned to May and Coulson. "Do you guys mind if I take off for a few days?"

Fury's eyes met first Coulson's and then May's, a silent conversation occurring between the three before he gave Coulson a barely-there nod. "As long as you check in regularly." He told her.

"Great." Skye seemed to disappear into her own head again, thinking quickly of the visions she'd been having and the dreams of the terrifying future she would've participated in if she hadn't traveled back. The people she'd met and who knew what, was crucial to explaining what she knew about Maveth and the Monolith as well as that dreaded whisper, "HIVE."

"I'm gonna get some of my things together and then would you mind dropping me off in the Badlands of South Dakota?" Skye asked Fury.

"Sure." He answered slowly, watching her with sharp eyes as she retreated back into her thoughts. "Who are you gonna visit?"

She shoots him a mischievous grin. "We're on a need-to-know basis right now, sir - and right now, you don't need to know." He can't help huffing in frustration and Skye outright laughs at that. "Sucks not to have all the information, doesn't it?" She asks and he rolls his eyes, cocking one eyebrow at her. She schools her face into a serious expression before explaining her plans. "The BUS is going to take at least another ten days to get running again. I'll be back in six."

"Don't you need some form of transportation?" May asks and Skye shakes her head.

"No, I've got a friend who is good at getting places quickly." The three of them each gave her a look and Skye rolled her eyes. "It's not illegal, I swear."

"Alright. Go ahead and pack. Meet me back here tomorrow and I'll take you myself." Fury told her and she nodded quickly leaving the office.

There was a silence for a moment before Coulson turned to Fury. "You believe everything she's told us?" He asked the Director and Fury nodded.

"Yes. As strange as she is, I think she's on our side. I also think she's not entirely human."

"Sir?" May asked trying to keep the anxiety from her voice.

"The way she was speaking about the Monolith we keep on the Iliad - how it reacted to her when she traveled back through time and wanting Thor to take it off world. Her knowledge of the alien drug and medical procedures we used to bring you back to life." He nodded to Coulson "Whatever extra abilities or powers she keeps alluding to . . ."

"You think they're alien in nature?" She asked.

"Possibly." Fury confirmed quietly.

"So, how do you want to deal with her demands?" Coulson changed the topic quickly.

"I'm gonna place a tracker and a bug on her when I drop her off in South Dakota. Just because I believe her, doesn't mean I trust her . . . and I really don't like her calling the shots." Fury admitted.

May couldn't help but smirk at him. "You really do hate not having all the information."

"I hate that she's so smug about it." Fury growled lowly, then sighed. "Alright, you two are dismissed."

"Yes, sir." Coulson said hiding his grin and he and May proceeded to leave, heading down the hall together.

It only takes a few moments for May to address the real matter at hand. "For what it's worth, Phil," She begins staring straight ahead while her partner peeks at her from his peripheral vision, "I'm sorry that we didn't tell you the truth." It's subtle but she can feel him stiffen as they walk down the hallway together. "When Fury came to me told me what he had done, my immediate reaction was to follow orders. But I didn't do it for Fury, I did it for you, Phil. To protect you, I-" She swallowed hard glancing away for a vulnerable minute. "You mean a lot to me -  _a lot_." She turned her head towards him, still not completely looking at him even though she could feel his gaze on hers. "To hear you were dead . . ." Her voice cracked and Phil reached out, grabbing her by the wrist and swinging her around, pulling her into a hug.

She was stunned for a moment before allowing herself to relish that one long moment. Then she cleared her throat loudly and pulled away, her mask easily slipping back onto her face.

"I'm not gonna pretend to understand what it was like for you, hearing I was dead and then having Fury come to you about creating a team for me." Coulson practically whispered to her. "But I am pissed. I probably will be for a while. However, I'm glad I found out now, rather than later, otherwise I'm sure I would've come to resent you for keeping secrets from me for so long."

May gave him just the tiniest of smiles before they continued back on their way to their respective rooms.

Skye, on the other hand, was packing her bags, and - after having swept her room for bugs she suspected Ward might have planted - was talking on the phone with someone she hadn't spoken to in years.

"Scott, hand the phone to Kurt." Skye says frustratedly. "Just do it."

"No! That means you need to use his powers to get around!" Scott Summers argued.

"Of course I do! But it also means that I want to see my friend, whom I haven't seen in three years." Skye sits down on the bed.

"Fine, fine! But I have to tell the Professor." Scott sighs.

"I know. I just want him for a week. Five, six days tops." She tells him and he's silent, waiting for her to elaborate while he walks the hallways looking for his blue friend. "Scott, something happened. Something totally and completely bizarre that I need the Professor for."

"Skye-"

"Look, you're my soul mate and my best friend, Scott, but this is beyond even you. Only the Professor can help me work through this and even then, I might not be able to tell you everything."

"You mean you won't _want_ to." Scott says as he turns into the kitchen and finds the person in question.

"Scotty, you are one of the most stubborn, judgmental, and pig-headed person I know, and I love you, but this is too big." Scott blew out a low breath before he nodded  to himself.

"Fine, I'll just ask the Professor later. Hey Kurt! Skye's on the phone for you!"

"No way! Really? Awesome!" The furry blue man bounded over happily to Scott and the phone was handed off.

Scott frowned as Kurt begins to talk at hyper speed towards the girl with his words circling her right ankle. He'd always regretted how he'd handled Skye. She'd finally ran away from the foster system because of him. But he _was_ grateful that they'd built their friendship back up without any hard feelings. 

 

**Badlands of South Dakota**

The next day, Skye was walking down the ramp of the quinjet Fury was flying. "So, I guess you'll be back in-"

"Six days." Skye finished for Fury. She met his dark gaze evenly. "I know you probably placed a tracker somewhere on my bag or person, but I'm going to deactivate it and the other one." She mentioned but the Director of SHIELD didn't flinch. "I said that I'd tell you guys everything eventually, and I will. But you will have to trust me - despite your instincts that are telling you not to." She closed her eyes as her headache suddenly came back in full force and more images flooded her mind, voices echoing in her ear. Skye gasped in pain as Fury moved forward.

"Breathe." He murmured in her ear as he grabbed her by the arm firmly holding her in place as she looked ready to collapse.

It took a while for the future scenes to clear her mind this time and Skye sighed in relief, rubbing at her forehead, before glancing up at Nick Fury.

"New York, a northeast province of China, Hong Kong, Delaware - I think - and Texas." She named the locations she was going to visit quietly to him. "That's where I'm going to be for the next six days." She slowly pulled away from his grip and he nodded slowly.

"Alright. Just call and check in regularly with Coulson or May." She nodded to him and then quickly left.

As she walked she gently reached out with her senses, locating the tracker and the bug easily within her bag and phone, flooding them with the right vibrational frequency to destroy them. It took her a while to find him and when she arrived outside the misshapen electrical fence his voice came out of the loudspeaker built next to the door.

"I don't know who you are girlie, but I'd keep walking if I was you." The Australian drawled. Skye just rolled her eyes and opened the unlocked door. She immediately reached out with her senses, finding the land-mines she knew were planted all over the small desert yard, and carefully making her way to the trailer.

The man in question stepped out of his trailer with a rifle in his hands, his long hair swept back behind his ears and his leather jacket impractical in the heat.

"My name is Skye, I'm just here to talk, James. I know you don't know me, but I am Jiaying's daughter."

"Jiaying has a daughter?" James was astounded. "Since when?"

"Since twenty-five years ago." Skye told him evenly. "She didn't send me but I wanted to learn about Inhuman history and I understand you would know more than most."

"Ah, you want to know about our first descendants." James assumed.

"More importantly, I want to know about Alveus, and the Kree device you stole." Skye remembered the name from her future vision and James blinked in surprise at that.

He narrowed his eyes at her suspiciously for a long moment before setting his rifle down and gesturing her inside.

"Alright then, come on, we don't have all day." He opened the door and let her in first.

"No, we most certainly do not." Skye muttered to herself.

 

**New York**

They appeared in a flash of blue smoke that had Skye coughing despite her previous experiences with the mutant in front of her.

"You've been . . . you've been getting better." Skye had to clear her throat at the taste and burn.

"I haven't tried crossing oceans yet, but for you I would." Kurt beamed at her and Skye couldn't help returning his smile.

"Thanks, Kurt."

"I suppose you would like to see the Professor." Skye nodded, taking note that Kurt's accent was not as heavy as it had been before.

Together Skye and Kurt crossed the large green lawn, walking up the steps of the mansion and heading inside. A few kids ran through the hallways as Kurt explained some of the changes and improvements they'd done to the mansion.

 _Skye, meet me in my office, please._ The hacker had to fight not to flinch at the foreign thought projected into her mind.

Kurt paused, cocking his head as if listening to something and nodded. "The Professor just contacted me, he mentioned I was needed in the kitchen. Meet you there after your meeting for dinner?" Skye nodded and he immediately teleported elsewhere.

Skye hurried through the busy hallways, greeting a few of the older students and teachers before reaching Professor Xavier's office. She pushed through the doors, automatically running into a chiseled hard chest covered in a white wife-beater tank. Recognizing him from his scent and muscles alone, Skye smiled and wrapped her arms around the animalistic man in front of her.

"Hi Logan, it's been a while." She murmured and she felt him stiffen, hesitating before his arms tightened around her giving her a nice squeeze before pulling away.

"Hey kid, long time no see." Logan stood with his jacket and motorcycle gloves in his hands.

"You taking off?" Skye asked a little disappointed and Logan shook his head.

"Just getting back actually. Took a little trip, picked up an interesting piece of cargo I thought the Professor would like."

Skye laughed. "Don't tell me you recruited someone?" Logan shrugged.

"A young girl I met. She ran away from her foster home and Mystique actually found her, took her to the Brotherhood but it wasn't working out. She left and I found her instead."

"She's a mutant with extraordinary abilities." Professor Xavier rolled forward. Skye turned to him with a smile and knelt down next to his special wheelchair to hug him warmly.

"I'll, uh, leave you guys for a moment." Logan said lowly and Skye pulled away smiling at the Professor. She crossed to one of the couches in the middle of the room and the Professor wheeled over after her.

"So, uh, a lot has happened since I've seen you last, and I need your help sorting out everything in my head. It's a lot - too much, actually and only you can help me." Skye told him in a stressed tone.

"Alright, my dear. Don't worry, everything will be alright." He leant over and pressed his fingers to her temple. "Just calm down, and relax. Allow me to see what's going on in there that has you so worried and confused." Skye did as he said, sighing deeply before closing her eyes and trying to destress from the last week alone.

It didn't take long for the Professor to gently prod her consciousness but when she let him in, the images and visions and emotions and power within her flooded to the forefront and he nearly fell out of his chair at the sheer amount of memories that were overwhelming them both.

 _Alright, Skye._ His voice was clear in her mind.  _Slow down your thoughts, put your memories in order for me, I'm a little unprepared here._

Skye breathed deeply before letting him guide her through the process. It took the Professor, nearly half an hour to realize that he was rolling through her memories of a completely separate timeline. That is, until he saw her in traumatic life-threatening situations, her first in a hyperbaric chamber, barely surviving two gunshots to the gut, her second in a cocoon with her partner dying underground, and her third in a HYDRA castle trying and nearly failing to rescue her teammates from another world. When he saw her travel through time, wake up back in her car and her second surrogate father and traitorous teammate take her to what had become a second home to her, he nearly pulled out of her mind entirely at his shock. Instead, he pressed closer, watching her understand what had happened, what the knowledge of the next three years was doing to her, the choices she was making, how alone and guilty and grief-stricken she felt. The visions of the future if she hadn't left, hit them both hard bringing only terror she'd betray her team and Lincoln again as well as the fear of what was to come. Finally he saw what she had planned for the next week and where she planned to go, the things she needed to learn and who she needed to see and the weight of that pressed down on the both of them as she knew whatever was coming, whatever she changed would have good _and_ bad consequences.

The Professor and Skye both opened their eyes at the same time and he reached forward, pulling her off the couch so she was kneeling on the ground and wound his arms around her tightly.

"I'm so sorry for the things you've had go through, Skye. I wished you'd contacted me sooner. I've come across Jiaying in the past and I could have sent you to her so you could learn from her, allow you both to grow your relationship. I would like to help you change the future, and I know how terrible the ramifications could be, but I know you can help make our world a better place with your knowledge." The Professor murmured in her ear.

Skye couldn't hold back the tears anymore. "Thank you, thank you!"

She broke down, sobbing into his shoulder as everything seemed to crash down on her. All the choices and decisions she was making, everything that was at stake, people's lives she could save or kill. Having all of this on her shoulders seemed impossible but she wanted to try anyway and the Professor was going to help her. Charles Xavier wanted to help her.

When she could finally wipe away her tears, she pulled away slowly and looked up at him. "So, who do we see first?" She asked hopefully.

 

**Afterlife**

Kurt had to make multiple jumps just to get there, but with some great descriptions and Google Earth images as well as rest in between jumps, he managed to land himself, Skye, and Professor Xavier, right in the middle of the patio square of her mother's community of Inhumans in the late night time zone of Eastern China.

There was no alarm, no food lights that went off at their sudden appearance, but a familiar figure apparated right in front of them. A familiar man with skin grown over his eyes and a trench coat.

"Who are you? How did you get here?" He asked harshly as he strode forward towards the three.

"I'm sorry we disturbed you, Gordon but we need to see Jiaying." The Professor spoke calmly and slowly to him.

Gordon stopped up short, recognizing the bald man in the wheelchair as well as recognizing the familiar sense of the young Inhuman woman in front of him.

"Professor, I wish you'd called ahead." Gordon said evenly, tilting his head towards the younger woman and man in front of him.

"Gordon, this is Kurt, one of my charges and Skye. She has been looking for her mother and father for a long time and recently came into some information that led us here. I believe her birth name is Daisy Johnson."

Gordon froze at that name and Jiaying, a tall woman with her hair braided away from her scarred face, stepped out of the shadows. "Gordon?" Her eyes never left Skye's as she stepped up next to him.

"She is Inhuman, that much I do know." He murmured to her.

"My father was Calvin Johnson, but now he uses the last name Zebo." Skye spoke up. "You and he lived together in the Hunan province of China twenty-five years ago until a group of men led by a man named Whitehall destroyed it and kidnapped you. He'd seen you before in the 50s before Peggy Carter rescued you, and you hadn't aged a day." Skye said staring at her mother. "Whitehall did awful things to you but Cal stitched you up and he vowed he would never stop looking for me, to put his family back together, while you focused on creating a new family for yourself - a community of Inhumans."

"Daisy?" Jiaying was crying silently, tears running down her face. "When were you born?"

"July 2nd, 1988. Dad helped you give birth to me in your own home because the car wouldn't start." Skye said with a small smile and Jiaying let out a sob as she rushed forward, scooping Skye into her arms.

"Oh my God." The two women clung to each other. "It's really you!" She pulled away slowly, her hands running over her daughter's face and shoulders. "How - how is this possible?"

"It's a long story," Skye sighed.

"But I think it can wait," Professor Xavier said with a smile. "Gordon, would you be willing to take Skye and Kurt to any available rooms you might have? I want to speak with Jiaying before I get some rest as well."

Gordon waited for Jiaying to nod her approval before doing as suggested. "Of course, why don't you two follow me." He gestured to Skye and Kurt and they slowly followed the eyeless man. Skye stared back over her shoulder at her mother who couldn't take her eyes off her daughter.

Jiaying turned to the wheelchair-bound man and gestured for him. "Come, we can talk in my office." When they were settled, she met his gaze evenly. "I remember the last time we were in the same room together, you tried to invade my mind and correct what my husband had done."

"There were so many scars, Jiaying, physically and mentally. Calvin and Whitehall had both done such damage to your psyche and you asked for my help, you just didn't like what I suspected the end result would be." The older woman sighed looking down into her lap.

"You are right." She admitted, "Over the years I've recognized that something inside me has changed. Whatever humanity I had before Whitehall dissected me has clearly left but . . ."

"I don't think it ever really left, but your daughter might just be the cure for that." The Professor spoke softly and she looked up at him, her eyes damp again.

"You have given me the most precious gift. You have given me back my daughter." She said in a watery voice.

"Jiaying, Skye has been through an enormous ordeal. When she came to me yesterday, she allowed me into her mind and showed me her memories and they astonished me. She did give me permission to show you what has happened and . . . what _will_ happen."

She leaned forward, closing her eyes as the Professor reached out and put his fingers to her temple. "Keep in mind, Jiaying, that no matter what you see right now, Skye has vowed that she will change the future and protect not just Inhumans, but the world at large from themselves."

Jiaying frowned in thought but nodded. The Professor closed his eyes and together they leapt into the timeline Skye had lived through.

It took nearly an hour for Jiaying to make sense of everything she'd seen but she felt the horror slowly creeping up on her of what Skye had lived through, of the original Inhuman HIVE - Alveus - to come. She looked up at her old friend stricken.

"How do we stop this?" She asked him and he looked at her solemnly.

"Slowly and step-by-step, Jiaying. But first, I think you know." She shook her head in resignation before sighing deeply.

"Alright, Charles. I'll let you in my head. I just don't think you'll find what you're looking for."

"You think you lost your humanity when you woke up to your husband telling you your daughter was gone and Whitehall had _your_  new life ahead of him. But I believe you're wrong. I think the amount of trauma you've experienced to your body and abilities, you've grown dispassionate about humans in general. And that can be very dangerous.  _Believe_ me, I know. You are a cold and calculating and ruthless leader over the years, but . . . who you are at your core, that woman I met years ago who was so young and idealistic and compassionate is still in there. Just let me unlock her." The Professor said quietly and she nodded to him.

"We'll do this your way, and then you have to promise me, when you come across Cal, make him forget. He's been ruled too long by his serum-addled brain. His obsession and love will never allow him to stop interfering in whatever plans you and my daughter have made. Give him a new life." Jiaying pleaded and the Professor nodded to her with a small smile.

"I will."

 

**Hong Kong**

The next two days were long ones for Skye since her mother had unlocked all Inhuman records and history - Skye had spent an entire day and a half researching Alveus, the monolith and Inhuman's history with HYDRA. By the time she felt she'd learned all she could, Gordon took Skye, Jiaying, and the Professor after an early dinner on her second day at Afterlife to where the woman who dressed in flowers would be.

Raina's powers might not have been activated yet but Gordon could still sense his own kind among the swarming humans of the busy city. Without any direction from Skye, he led them to the medical facility Skye knew they were trying to perfect the Centipede serum. They only had to wait for half an hour at a coffee shop down the street before they saw Raina leaving the facility. Gordon let her disappear down the street and waited another five minutes before he nodded to Jiaying.

"You have her position?" The older woman asked and he nodded. They left and turned into an alley so that Gordon could take them to her apartment. They appeared in seconds and Skye moved forward to knock on the door but Jiaying grabbed her shoulder to stop her.

"Skye, I know this is your plan, but your mother is more experienced in recruiting Inhumans to her community. It might be better for her to take the lead on this." The Professor said evenly and Skye sighed, recognizing he was right. She gestured to Jiaying and her mother stepped forward, knocking on the door.

They could hear shuffling from the other side of the door, before it swung open. "Yes?" The petite woman with curly dark hair and large almond eyes asked looking curiously at the strange group of people in front of her.

"Hello Raina, my name is Jiaying and I understand you know my husband, Cal?"

Raina froze at her words staring in a mixture of awe and fear at the woman in front of her. "You are like me." She said excitedly.

Jiaying gave her a small smile. "Yes. I only recently learned of your ancestry and understand that you are an Inhuman. Would you be willing to come with us, to our community and learn about our history and heritage?"

"Yes, of course." Raina gushed then stopped abruptly. "It's just, I'm in the middle of a project-"

"A project that is trying to immerse impossible chemistry into humans," Jiaying stared down at her. "Something I'm sure you've seen with my husband." She scolded.

Raina looked down at her feet as if in shame but Skye could see it was just another ploy to seem meek and willing. Jiaying could see it too but she didn't say anything.

"He found me years ago on the streets, fed me, clothed me, gave my life meaning. He told me the stories my grandmother used to tell me were real and that he'd help me achieve all that I hoped for if I helped him find his- _your_ daughter." Raina corrected herself quietly.

"And I have found her." Jiaying gestured to Skye and Raina's eyes widened. "We would like a proper reunion so Daisy can meet her father, but we don't know where he is. Can you help us?"

"Yes, of course." Raina agreed quickly. "If you give me a few days, I can wrap up my life here, make sure no one comes looking for me. The people employing me are very-"

"Cruel." Skye spoke up, trying not to glare at the woman in the flower dress.

Raina eyed her before glancing finally at the wheelchair-bound man as well as the man with skin grown over his eyes. "They can be yes. Discovery requires experimentation."

Jiaying froze at those words from her most devastating memory and glared down at the young woman in front of her. "Do not  _ever_ say that again. Do you understand me, Raina?" She said in an icy tone and Raina looked surprised at her.

"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to offend you."

"The man who speaks those words like his religion, Daniel Whitehall, is a madman." Skye told Raina harshly. "He cut up my mother, dissected her and stole her youth. He's the man my father has vowed to kill and you willingly work for him."

"No, no!" Raina tried to reassure them. "I work for the Clairvoyant."

"No, Raina. His abilities aren't real. He's a double agent within SHIELD who has unlimited resources at his disposal to see everything he needs to see. He's dying and he thinks if he uses you and that redheaded doctor to create a super-soldier serum, it will cure him and make him invulnerable to practically everything. He's just one cog in the machine of the organization that Whitehall works for." Skye told her.

Raina blinked in shock at the amount of information Skye was giving her and the Professor wheeled up and gripped Skye's hand tightly. She visibly relaxed before stepping forward and grabbing Raina's hands in hers.

"Raina, listen to me." She looked up at the hacker. "You grew up on the streets, you've had to learn how to survive - how to numb yourself to others' pain just so you can live another day. You manipulate those around you to find the impossible, to see miracles and evolution, but you're doing it the wrong way. You might pretend at work, but you aren't sadistic. Let us help you. Not because you want be special and have powers. Let us help you because you want better for yourself, because you want to _be_ better in life. I'm not gonna lie, you have a very long and hard road ahead of you. But I think you'll actually be happy in the end, with yourself and with who you become."

Raina stared at the young woman in front of her. "Really?" She asked in a small voice and Skye nodded.

"Yes."

"Thank you." Raina said with tears in her eyes. She launched herself into Skye's arms and hugged her tightly. Skye was taken aback but relieved that Raina was on board.

 

**Delaware**

The next morning, after listening to Raina's specific directions, Gordon teleported himself, Jiaying, Skye and the Professor to a small town in Delaware. This time, Jiaying would go in alone, with the Professor out of sight, but on standby.

Jiaying and the Professor entered the small open loft with little fanfare but Cal was on his feet escorting his client to the door as he wiped blood off his hands with a rag. The Professor stopped short and hid outside the doorway while Jiaying stepped through. Cal froze when he saw his wife and his face lost all solemnity and he beamed at her.

"My love, you're-you're here." He stammered as she stepped into the room.

"Cal, Raina found her." Jiaying cut straight to the point, returning his smile but with a sad tinge to it. "She found our Daisy." Cal looked shocked.

"Then where are they? Why aren't they here?"

"Because, the last time we were together - you were dangerous, Cal." She told him. "I didn't want to risk Daisy's safety in case you were still using that serum you created."

"That old thing?" He said nonchalantly, but his wife shook her head at him.

"Cal!" She said warningly and he hung his head.

"I'm sorry, Jiaying, but I promised you that I'd put our family back together. I wasn't strong enough to protect my family! But with that serum, I am!" He was working himself up. "I can do things that no one else can do! I can protect Daisy and I can protect you! I would never hurt Daisy! Never!"

 _Charles._ Came the thought and her counterpart wheeled into the room.

"Calvin, you need to calm down." Xavier spoke evenly and Cal whipped around.

"You!" He sneered at the older bald man. "I remember you! You tried to wipe my mind, last time! You made me forget my formulas! I had to start all over!" He started to rush the mutant but Gordon was there in a flash. He hugged the desperate father to his chest and forced him to his knees in front of the Professor.

"No! No! I want to see my daughter! Let me see my daughter!" Calvin cried as Xavier reached out, but he paused.

 _Please, Professor. Let me meet with him, I can make him see reason._ Skye's voice echoed in the Professor's mind and he sighed.

_Alright then, Skye. Quickly._

Skye came rushing through the door. "Dad!" She blurted out and Calvin froze in Gordon's grip.

"Daisy?" He asked hopefully.

"Dad, look at yourself. You're acting like an animal!" She told him bluntly and he looked startled at her words. "You're better than this." Gordon slowly loosened his hold on the scientist, finally retracting his arms.

"I'm sorry, Daisy! I'm so sorry." He fell over himself trying to get to his daughter. He scooped her up into his arms and Skye let a tear escape at the emotions threatening to overwhelm her before she slowly pulled back.

"Dad, I know what you've done. The people you've hurt, the ones you've killed."

"They took you from me-from us!" He protested but she shook her head.

"I know. But I also know that deep down, you hate yourself for doing that. You have always been a doctor first." Skye told him solemnly and he stared at her with wide eyes. "You swore to always help those who were hurt and but you didn't. You ended peoples' lives."

"I know, but I-"

"I have been where you are, I was responsible for my partner's death. He died because of me and I have to live with that every single day. And so do you, and it's eating at you. It's been eating at you for twenty-five years, Dad. You're angry and filled with hate all the time. But Professor Xavier can make all of that go away. He can erase all of that pain, all of that anger, all of that hate. He can give you a new life."

"But I don't want a new life. I want you!" He cupped her face in his hands, tears streaming down his face.

"The serum you created, Dad, it's making you sick. It's fueling all your volatile emotions. You'll never truly be happy and I want you to be happy." Skye said sincerely. "Even though I'm meeting you now, I know you're a good man deep down and you deserve to be happy without any of this life's pain you've been given."

"You want me to forget you." Calvin said sadly.

"I want you to have a fresh start." She told him quietly.

They stood there for a long moment before he sniffed, pulling his hands away and wiping at his face. Skye stared up at her father, broken and sad before reaching up and tugging him down into another hug.

"Okay." He breathed in her ear and she couldn't help the small sigh of relief escape. "I'll do it." He said, looking over at Professor Xavier and his wife.

"I love you, Dad." Skye told him and he beamed down at her.

"I love you too, kiddo." He hugged her once more before glancing at his wife. "One dinner as a family. Before I let him into my head." He told her and she nodded.

"Alright." She sighed and smiled at him.

 

**Texas**

It had only been a few days but Skye was exhausted mentally and emotionally, but she knew she had to make one more visit to her current boyfriend, Miles Lydon. This time she let Kurt - who'd of course been fascinated by the Inhuman community but had been stir crazy for days - take her stateside. After multiple promises to her mother, the Professor, and even Raina, that she'd be back to visit frequently and call often, Skye left Afterlife, making several jumps with Kurt to make it to Dallas.

She had him wait downstairs while she went up to his apartment and knocked on the door. She could practically see him from the other side just freeze in his tracks, staring at the door before calling out. "Who is it?"

"Your girlfriend, dumbass." She called back teasingly and he laughed. When he opened the door, his shirt was unbuttoned and he still had shaving cream on his face. He looked her over with an eyebrow cocked before his eyes narrowed.

"You look different - and I don't just mean your hair." He said before stepping aside and letting her pass. He closed the door behind them and she turned to face him.

"You're right. I am different, because I've changed Miles. I've changed a lot." She tells him seriously even as familiar feelings began to rush forwards.

"How so?" He asked her still studying her with his sharp eyes before walking past her to the bathroom. She followed him and watched him in the mirror as he went back to shaving.

"I can't actually tell you." Skye says hesitantly he barks a short laugh before sobering at her expression in the mirror.

"You're serious."

"I am." She agrees with him.

"What happened to the truth sets you free? Free information?"

"And how's that working for you Miles? Still hacking for  _free_?" Miles recoils guiltily.

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"It means, I know about the lady in the flower dress who contacted you." He looks away sheepishly.

"Come on, Skye. You've been living in your van long enough to understand-"

"That was by choice, Miles!" Skye interrupts him. "I know you're better than this. So whatever that lady asked you to do, I really hope you haven't done it yet."

"No!" Miles protested loudly and turning around to face her. "I wanted to make sure she was legit first. I traced the account the money came from to make sure it wasn't some evil corporation or something. The project she works for is just some eco research lab on insects - some study with Centipedes."

"She already paid you?" Skye said anxiously. Miles paused as if caught in a lie before sighing.

"She found me in the coffee shop around the corner, she said she was a fan of the Rising Tide. She knew all about me, said I had a gift, said people like us deserved more." He was staring at her pleadingly now, trying to make her understand and Skye shook her head at him. "She pointed me to a Chinese SHIELD feed, wanted me to crack it. I checked the data stream, it didn't seem like anything else we hadn't already put out there, Skye. She transferred half million dollars upfront, told me I'd get the other half after I sent her the information. I haven't yet."

Skye closed her eyes and sighed in relief. "Thank God." She muttered. Miles frowned down at her.

"What's going on Skye?"

"I texted you, told you to make sure everyone knew that SHIELD was off limits."

"You said you were out." He began to get angry at her.

"Because I am, Miles! I'm done with the Rising Tide!"

"Does that mean you're done with me too?" He asks her harshly and Skye tries to laugh but ends up huffing out a scoff. "You are!"

"Miles, we've been drifting apart for a while now and I have bigger priorities than you."

"So what you're saying is you want to break up with me, and the only real reason you're here is to make sure I didn't-"

" _Sell_ information!" Skye quickly interrupts him. "Miles, I don't care how much money it is, this isn't who you are. Look, we've been through a lot. You were there for me when I was at my lowest and I'll always care about you. I just don't think we can work this out right now. We're in completely different places."

"You know I thought _we_ were gonna make it." He tells her sadly. "We both lost our soulmates to someone else and fell in love with coding. You could've been _it_ for me." He says wistfully. Skye shakes her head at him.

"Miles, you don't see it now, but you will find your _true_ soulmate. You and Sara were always meant to be platonic. Just like me and Scott."

"Scott broke your heart!" Miles says angrily. "Just because he didn't have your words, didn't give him the right to make you fall in love with him and then turn around and-"

"Miles, I had Scott's words, but he didn't have mine. He needed to bond with Jean first before his platonic mark ever showed up. We _both_ misinterpreted my mark early on and we _both_ handled things terribly, but we were lucky. Scott's professor helped us reestablish our relationship and we've been best friends ever since."

"Did you ever get another soul mark?" Miles asked quietly and Skye looked taken aback for a moment.

"I don't think so," She said thoughtfully, glancing down at her covered body. "I figured, one was enough for me."

"But then, what's on your neck?" Miles asked and Skye froze.

"What?" She asked quietly.

"You didn't see it?" Miles asks, stepping closer and pushing her hair to the side. His finger touches her skin and something cold seems to wash through her senses. She shivers as he walks around her, trailing his finger down and around the back of her neck like the scoop of a collar. "It curves down, but it's right here. It's another soul mark, Skye. I wonder when you got it."

"What's it say?" Skye whispers.

" **So _you're_ the one that's got Fury running scared.** "

Skye can't move. She's stricken as she realizes she has another soul mark now, wondering if she'd gotten it coming out of Terrigenesis and never realized or - no, Lincoln would've noticed when he helped her finish transitioning. So she must've acquired this one after traveling through time. This was . . . completely unnecessary and not wanted at all. She didn't need the distraction after all the rejection she'd faced in her life, she didn't think she could handle one more person - someone who was _made_ for her - tell her they didn't want her again. 

 _Because face it, with your luck, it'll be someone who doesn't believe in soulmates and wants nothing to do with you_. She couldn't help flinching at the thought that ran through her head.

"Skye?" Miles asked her and she spun around, hugging him tightly.

"I'm sorry, Miles." She muttered into his neck and he took a breath.

"It's okay. You were right, I've known this was coming for awhile. I just didn't want to believe it." His voice is a bit muffled into her hair. His arms tighten around her for a moment and then he pulls away to look down at her curiously. "Have you been working out? I thought you hated any form of exercise." He tells her and she finally starts to laugh, nodding her head.

"Yeah, I've been getting into shape. Trying to learn some self-defense." She says it nonchalantly enough that he smiles at her.

"Oh, is that all?"

"Yeah," She smiles at him and then punches him in the arm. "Don't ever sell out, Miles - and don't let anyone else sell out either. There are still plenty of secrets out there that the masses deserve to know about. Just remember, there _are_ some things that people just aren't ready for yet." She tells him seriously and Miles nods to her.

"Alright, I'll keep that in mind." He tells her and she smiles at him.

"Take care, Miles."

"You too, Skye." He smiles back.

 

**Slingshot**

On her last day, Skye let Kurt take her to back to New York. She spent the day with him at the school, getting to know new students and catching up with old friends. She only told Kurt and Scott of her new powers and a vague account of how she got them. It was nice but didn't last long. She had Logan drive her into the city where she had told Fury to pick her up. They were back at the Slingshot by nightfall and she slipped into her room unnoticed by her teammates.

Fury had explained what they'd told the rest of the team: that he'd taken her with him to be vetted by SHIELD and for a specific non-combat mission that required skills of her caliber.

The next morning, when Skye exited her room, Ward did too. He looked up in surprise at her appearance.

"Skye, you're back." He said rather obviously and she raised an eyebrow at him. He shook his head as if clearing his thoughts before stepping closer to her. "When did you get in?"

"Last night." She answered easily.

"Where'd you go? Coulson said Director Fury took you with him." Ward asked her curiously.

"He wouldn't actually tell me where we went, but I assumed it was SHIELD headquarters or something. Had me go through an extensive lie-detector, interrogated thoroughly - and I do mean, thoroughly," She smirked at him suggestively and Ward coughed into his hand to cover a smile. "And then he pulled me into a conference room sat me down with a laptop and told me to hack something for him. It took me hours. Running algorithms, cracking lines of codes, god I think I might have carpel tunnel at this point." She said looking down at her fingers. "Then when I was done, he said I had to do it again, but in the field. I mean seriously, to think that had just been a warm up was ridiculous. And then he had me complete a mission to prove my loyalty to SHIELD. Totally unnecessary by the way," She said loudly. "But yeah, I'm back." She smiled up at him and he nodded to her.

"Well, I'm glad you enjoyed the mission." Ward said sarcastically.

Skye made a face at him and headed towards the dining hall. Fitz and Simmons greeted her cheerfully questioning her whereabouts and Skye gave them a recap of what she'd told Ward. She made eye contact with Coulson and May across the room when they walked in and smiled at them. Coulson nodded to her in greeting and May just gave Skye one of her non-expressions.

It took a bit of working but Coulson managed to get Skye alone in his own compartment. "So how did it go?" He asked when she was sitting at the table with his files and paperwork at. But before she could answer, there was a knock at the door. "Come in!" Coulson called out and May entered the room, locking the door behind her.

She nodded to Coulson in greeting then turned her gaze to Skye. The hacker sighed before responding.

"My week went well." She told him. "I spoke with everyone I needed to, got as much research done as possible and I think I'll be ready when Fury can have us all meet."

"Good."

"I also made sure that SHIELD will have some allies for the future. Allies I _know_ Fury won't like but, he'll appreciate in the long run." She said watching Coulson closely.

Coulson stared her down for a long moment before May finally asked quietly, "Powered allies?"

Skye hesitated before nodding her head to them. "Yes."

"Interesting." Coulson said with a blank face and she rolled her eyes at him.

"Look, I know you guy still have questions for me, but all will be revealed soon." She said and he gave her a small smile.

"I understand."

"Now, do you have any information you'd like to share with us?" May questioned.

"Let's worry about that on a case-by-case basis." Skye told him slowly. "I don't think I should interfere too much, unless it's too dangerous. I honestly have no idea how things are going to pan out this time around, I'm already changing things and I'm worried about the repercussions."

"That's reasonable." Coulson sighed and exchanged a look with May.

"I get it, you guys still don't trust me."

"It's not a matter of trust." May told her. "It's knowing the difference that you're familiar with us, comfortable even, but we're still getting to know you. And that's something we're still trying to get used to." Skye swallowed hard, pushing away the sting of her words.

"I'll try not to overstep any boundaries you guys might have." She said with a tight smile. "I just want you to remember, we're all on the same side here."

She stood up and walked to the door nodding to both her Superior Officers and left the room.

May stared after her before Coulson stepped in front of her, drawing her gaze.

"What do you think?"

"I think this is weird for all of us." She told him and he nodded.

"Yeah, it is. But you need to go easy on her. She's all alone in this right now. The relationships she built with everyone after three years have all disappeared and she literally has to start over from scratch with all of us. That's devastating to someone like her, who thrives on relating and connecting with everyone."

May stared at him for a bit before taking a slow breath. "You've changed." She observed and he nodded.

"I died and came back to life. Of course I did." She cocked an eyebrow and her lips turned up just a tiny bit.

"I'm not just gonna be the pilot, am I?" She seemed to be thinking out loud.

"I get the feeling you won't be after the next case or two." Coulson's told her.

"Somehow I'm not surprised." She said dryly. Coulson grinned.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry again for the delay, I hope you guys liked it :D
> 
> Tell me what you want to happen in future episodes/chapters.
> 
> Please comment and critique.


	4. The Asset

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's only their third case together as a team, but Skye is coming face to face with the man who shot her in the stomach twice and she's wary with actually letting him escape.
> 
> How much does she admit to AC and May about Dr. Hall and Ian Quinn, and how much does she want revenge for what Quinn is going to do to her?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this episode moved a little quickly, I tried to slow it down a bit so I could put more of Skye's reactions in here for her meeting the man who shot her twice in the 1st season winter finale.
> 
> I put a little May-Skye heart-to-heart you guys might like, however brief it might be :)
> 
> Enjoy!

 

"You know, you're late." Ward notes, catching the swinging punching bag as Skye comes down the stairs of the BUS to the cargo hold-turned-training room for their daily sessions.

"I'm tired, from the  _morning's_ workout." Skye complains to him. "I thought I was joining  _SHIELD_ , not 24 hour fitness."

"It's called relative strength training, starting with the basics." He lectures her as he puts on her padded gloves for the bag. "And next time, you do 15 push-ups for every minute you're late."

"Fine! Mr. Fun-Machine." She snarks at him. "Better than pull-ups. I don't  _ever_ want to do another pull-up again." She says dramatically.

"You ever find yourself hanging off the edge of building twenty stories up, you're gonna want to do at least one." He meets her eyes seriously. He corrected her stance and showed her how to jab at the punching bag. She half-heartedly imitated him. "You know the hardest part about boxing?" He asked her.

"Getting punched in the face?" She joked as she did her jab cross.

"Keeping your hands up," Ward told her.

"Why do I even have to do this?" Skye complained as he showed her his stance and his hand positioning and then went back to doing it herself. "I'm sure FitzSimmons' Supervising Officer didn't make them do this muscle stuff." She whined tiredly.

Ward made a face gesturing as he reasoned with her. "You said you wanted to be a field agent like Coulson. Well, if you'd like to switch disciplines . . ." He turned to the scientists in their lab experimenting with their equipment. "Hey Simmons, what did your S.O. give you guys for morning drills?" He asked her.

"Oh, atomistic attribute skills. Yeah, we'd name the uh, mechanical, chemical, thermal-" Skye stared at her, punching the bag with one arm tiredly as Fitz finished Simmons' sentence for her.

"Electrical properties of materials."

"Okay, okay. They made your point." She tells Ward gruffly. He walks back over to her with a patronizing look.

"There will come a moment when you have to commit to this or bail." He tells her as he holds the bag while she punches again. "Every field agent has a defining moment. Ask Coulson. When you have to make the hard call. To either dedicate yourself to this or to curl up in a ball and run."

"How could you run, if you're curled up in a ball?" Skye asks between punches.

"It's my job as your S.O. to make sure you don't die before then," He says as he corrects her wrist again.

"So what was yours, Agent Ward?" Skye asks him as he leans back into the punching bag.

"Ten minutes." He tells her the time limit for her jabs.

"Your defining moment." She pauses when she doesn't get an answer. "Come on, tell me. I want to know." She makes a face at the punching bag. "I could get Coulson to give you some of that truth serum, spill your little heart out to me again." She mocks him and he squints at her.

"You mean my Level One overshare that miraculously got you to cooperate?" He says sarcastically. "I hate to tell you this, Rookie, but we don't have a truth serum." Skye scoffs, her mouth dropping open humorously.

" _Changing course, briefing in three_." May's voice comes over the intercom.

"Ah, looks like we're on the move." Fitz says from the lab, shrugging off his coat and rushing for the stairs as Simmons follows.

" _SHIELD 616 with new orders. Set for Colorado Airfield North._ "

Everyone convenes upstairs in the lounge area to the left of the control room.

"A few minutes ago, a SHIELD transport was attacked while carrying a Priority Red protected asset off Route 76 near Sterling." Coulson tells the team, reading off his tablet.

"Priority Red." Simmons says nervously while Fitz whistles in astonishment.

"The asset was Canadian physicist, Dr. Franklin Hall, known for his work-" He shows the team his photo and credentials from his tablet.

"Oh, no! Not Frank!" Simmons says heartbroken.

"Dr. Hall!" Fitz blurts out at the same time. "He was our chemical kinetics advisor our second year."

"He's so enthusiastic about science, we just adored him. We can rescue him, can't we?" Simmons asked.

"He's one of ours, so we're gonna try."

"And the attackers?" Ward questioned.

"Invisible." Coulson answered and walked back into the command center.

"Wait, invisible?" Skye lets out an excited laugh, "So cool." She glances at Ward's serious expression and sobers quickly. "But terrible." She finishes quickly.

By the time they get to the crime scene, Skye hasn't had the chance to get May or Coulson alone so she can talk to them about their new case.

"Dr. Hall was an asset?" Skye asks as they walk down the highway. Coulson glances at her before answering.

"One of a few select scientists SHIELD has been protecting, people our enemies would love to get their hands on. We keep them hidden, keep them on the move."

"Which is why Fitz and I were so lucky to have him." Simmons tells them.

"We don't have him anymore." Coulson says grimly.

"And what does priority red mean?" Skye asks.

"It means security should have been . . ." Everyone pauses, staring up at an SUV stuck in a tree. "Heavy." Coulson finishes.

AC and May both interrogate the surviving driver of the semi-truck they'd been transporting Dr. Hall in. He answers their questions but alludes to there being a mole within SHIELD who leaked their route.

Simmons is a bit past the SHIELD agents Crime Scene unit with special equipment she's using and calls back to her partner. "Fitz, what am I seeing here?"

"Well, I'm not wearing the full-spectrum goggles I designed, so . . . no clue." He chuckles as Ward and Skye follow him to see what Simmons found. "Come on, let me have a look." He gestures for her to hand them over but she stops him and Skye from walking further.

"Whoa, whoa, wait! Don't move!" She grabs some dirt and throws it up in the air, but instead of falling to the ground it swirls around as if there's a strong wind.

"What the hell?" Ward mutters and May and Coulson walk up behind them watching curiously.

"I think the electro-static field scanner activated some . . . thing." The bizarrely acting dirt suddenly flew towards Ward and Skye causing them to duck.

"Okay, can we deactivate now?" Coulson asked warily. Simmons starts punching numbers into her spectrometer.

"Have to increase the density." Fitz told her and the dirt blows around in a frenzy making them all duck.

"I tried, Fitz!" She shouts over the noise and he grabs it from her, punching in numbers.

"Fitz!" May warns him as he dirt flies around frantically. He finally maxes it out and the dirt drops to the ground after his spectrometer sparks too high.

Simmons bends down and, with tweezers, picks up what looks like small metal rings welded together with a tiny moving mass in the middle.

" _That_ did _all_ this." She says in amazement. Coulson grabs it from the tweezers, looking more closely at it.

"What is that?" Skye voices what's all on their minds.

"Something big." He answers.

They take it back to the bus to be examined by Fitz and Simmons in the lab with the others watching over intensely. Coulson is standing next to May as they watch Fitz with his equipment studying the peculiar thing.

"Either someone cracked our COMM system, or Dr. Hall's movements leaked from inside SHIELD." Coulson tells her.

"You think we have a mole?" She asked him and he met her gaze once before they both glanced over at Skye standing over Simmons' shoulder as she and Fitz poked and prodded at the tiny mass.

"I think you should go through the communication logs, rule it out. We'll work the tractor tread that we found on the scene." He tells her. She nods and leaves to go gather them all.

"I can do that, instead of pull-ups." Skye jokes. "I can upload an image of the tread pattern, check to see if there's any sort of-"

"Already done." Ward entered the lab. "Matched it to a 2010 model. Found a list of purchasers within a 500-mile radius, narrowed down to those with priors, financial troubles, or propensity for risk-taking." He told AC and May. "Three suspects." He punched in his findings into he holotable of the lab and showed them on the screen to his C.O.s.

"Who may have sold their construction equipment to the kidnappers." Coulson concludes. "We'll ask."

Ward leaves the room to get ready and Skye turns to AC wanting to lighten the mood. "Hey, so, Ward said a funny thing. He said that you guys don't have a truth serum."

"Did he?" Coulson asked her with his normal deadpan expression on his face. "Ward said that?"

"Yeah." She nodded, looking at him expectantly.

"Interesting." He didn't give her an inch turning and walking out of the lab as well.

"Hey, wait-"

"Hey." May comes back into the lab with a massive binder full of paper, dropping it into Skye's hands.

"Do you want me to bench press this?" She asks the older woman slowly.

"Read it. Every communication out of HQ since they decided to transfer Dr. Hall." She eyes the hacker and Skye sighs, shaking her head at her.

"Hang in there Doc," she mutters to herself as May departs again. "It's gonna be awhile."

Ward and AC interrogate a cowboy who sold his construction equipment to the kidnappers and find out he was paid in gold. They bring it back to the lab for Simmons to scan.

"It looks like this because it's  DORe bar. It means it was made at the mine rather than in a refinery." Simmons explains to Coulson. "It's only about 92% pure. The cowboy got cheated a bit." She rambles.

"Can you determine the mine based on the impurities?" Coulson asks her.

"Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah." Fitz tells him. "We've done that already." He sits down at his computer and looks it up. "It's from the Dacey mine in Tanzania, which is owned by-"

"Quinn Worldwide." He studies the name on the computer before addressing FitzSimmons. "I'm sure you studied the C.E.O. in your chemical engineering classes or saw him on the cover of  _FORBES_ \- Ian Quinn." Coulson identifies him, walking out of the lab to go give his findings to the rest of the team.

It takes a while but Fitz finally deduces what the tiny object that caused so much destruction was.

"Gravitonium: it's an extremely rare high-atomic numbered element."

"That powers the device." Simmons finishes for him. "So extremely rare that most people didn't believe it existed, much less the theory that an isolated positive charge-"

"Would turn the flow from isotropic-"

"Guys!" Skye interrupts them. "High school dropout here." She admits. "How does the device work again?"

"Well, gravitonium, distorts gravity fields within itself, causing an undulating amorphous shape."

"Which causes these, um . . . wiggly bits here," Fitz points to the screen as they explain to Skye again. "But when an electric current is applied," He gestures with his  hands form a ball, "the gravitonium solidifies. And those gravity fields erupt," he shakes his hands quickly and then pulls them apart. "Randomly changing the rules of gravity around it. Well, so now you can imagine what would happen to a big rig at 100 kilometers per hour. Or, uh, well, you could just remember, cause we saw it already didn't we?" He sounds almost excited at the prospect.

"Yeah, and guess which genius published every theory about gravitonium and possible applications years ago?" Simmons asks Skye.

"Dr. Franklin Hall." She nods in understanding.

"Correct. And Dr. Hall attended the University of Cambridge at the same time as Ian Quinn." Fitz says as he types into his computer.

"You know I thought Coulson may be off on this at first." Skye tells them, pushing the fury and pain at the man who shot her - twice - to the side. "Quinn is usually a notoriously good guy. His charity endowment's something like $8 billion. But when I did a second background search on him I discovered his money is made from leeching the Earth of it's resources and now . . ." She sighs trying to let the anger and rage she can still feel in the back of her mind go.

"Looks like he's dug up another." Simmons says agreeing with Skye.

Everyone convenes upstairs in the command center to figure out a plan to rescue him.

"The man's a prisoner and it's up to us to get him out." Coulson says passionately.

"Are you sure about that? How do we know Hall isn't  _exactly_ where he wants to be?" Skye asks and the whole room turns to her.

"What?

"You're joking!" Fitz and Simmons are both outraged at her.

"Well, I mean, think about it." She tells the team, glancing around at everyone. "Dr. Hall has dedicated his _career_ looking for this element. And Ian Quinn has traveled the world with his mining operation over the last two decades to have accumulated enough gravitonium that he can hide it on his estate. Quinn kidnapped Hall for a reason, and I doubt it's to torture him or something. What if he took Hall specifically to _give_ him the gravitonium, or even worse, to _do_ something with it  _for Quinn_."

"Now that's a scary thought." May muttered.

"But Dr. Hall _knows_ just how dangerous this element is!"

"Yeah, he wouldn't allow Quinn to manipulate him like that!" Fitz and Simmons both protest.

"Even scarier!" Skye points to the science duo. "If Hall is as noble as you guys say he is, he knows how dangerous this element is - what if he decides to destroy it for the greater good? Imagine just  _how much_ Quinn probably has collected and stored underground?"

"He'd sink the island and everyone on it." Ward assumes.

Coulson stares at Skye until she meets his gaze and she seems to read the question in his eyes. She gives him a tiny nod and May, who'd been watching, sighs closing her eyes in frustration at the situation that is coming.

"Well, we don't know Dr. Hall's intentions yet and he's still one of ours. We need to focus on rescuing him and getting him off the estate."

"Right, but we've checked the specs, there's no way into Quinn's compound without a large SHIELD strike force or a man inside." Ward tells them. "He's got neodymium laser fencing surrounding the property."

"They'll never allow a strike force into Malta." Coulson answers him. "Plus this weekend, Quinn Worldwide's got it's annual shareholders gathering. We'd risk global outrage, but-"

"If we go in alone-" May picks up his line of thinking.

"SHIELD can disavow us, claim ignorance."

"Without a man inside, it's impossible." May protests. "Unless you're immune to pulse laser emissions." She says sarcastically. Skye pulls out her phone and starts typing as she leans against the left doorway of the command center listening to their disheartening efforts to think of ideas.

"If we had a monkey," Fitz starts and Skye automatically rolls her eyes fondly. "We could get in."

"Ugh, Fitz!" Simmons starts.

"If we had a small monkey, he could slip through the sensors and disable the fence's power source with his adorable little hands." Fitz smiles at the team.

"I could go in." Skye says nonchalantly as she continues typing into her phone.

"Drop me in the hills outside of Valletta." Ward starts ignoring Skye's offer. "I'll spend a few weeks establishing a cover, gathering intel-"

"Hall doesn't have a few weeks." Coulson tells him but May is staring at Skye. She can feel the pilot's gaze on her but she continues typing into her phone, already setting up her plan.

"And to restate, any agent of SHIELD caught on Maltese soil can be shot to death with bullets-"

"Yeah," Fitz nods at Simmons' nervous words.

"Legally."

"Not me." Skye stands up straight, glancing at the team. "I can go in."

"Skye, this is serious." Ward scolds her.

"Wait," Coulson cuts him off. He steps closer to her. "What are you saying?" He stares at her and she can read the underlying question in his eyes.

"Well, I'm not an agent of SHIELD, so I can go in without breaking all of these stupid rules." She still taps on her phone.

"International laws," Simmons corrects her.

"This isn't something the Rising Tide can hack, Skye." Ward talks down to her and Skye takes a breath, trying to calm her ever-growing anger.

"Did you hear the deadly laser part?" Fitz asks her, his head in his hands in exasperation. "Without a brave monkey-"

"You said you could go in with a man inside." Skye tries to persuade the team.

"And you want to be that man?" May asks her, Skye can read the silent message in May's eyes as well and nods to her slowly.

"FitzSimmons loved the guy, and he needs help." She gestures to the scientists. "I might be wrong and they could be torturing him, or worse," she eyes Ward and glances at Coulson before typing into her phone once more. "Making him do strength-training." She jokes.

"But you don't have the background or clearance or experience with any of this." Ward tells her firmly.

"I know." She tells him lightly. "But I've got an invitation." She shows them her phone where she'd hacked her way into Quinn Worldwide server and had them send her an invite to the shareholder's party. She glances down at the screen on her phone as the team stares at her in awe. "Well, technically it's an E-vite." She says flippantly.

Ward corners Coulson upstairs after the team meeting.

"I understand your concern, but we don't have a lot of options here."

"Hey, I'm impressed." He says in a low tone. "She just wrangled an invitation on her phone using insider back-channel voodoo in minutes. But sending her in with no training, you're taking a huge risk. I know Director Fury felt he owed you after you sacrificed yourself."

"And my card collection." Coulson snarks as he walks from his room to his connecting office.

"He gave you  _some_ autonomy, but  _Skye_ on a  _covert op_?"

"Are you worried about her safety or her loyalty?"

"Both. The Rising Tide is the _reason_ she got an invite. Who knows how many protocols she violated."

"That's her job - ignore protocol, find connections and back doors that nobody else can see. Something else is bothering you." Coulson reads Ward easily as he straightens his desk and the younger agent sighs, pacing a few steps before turning back to Coulson.

"She's holding back, sir. She says she wants to be an agent, but she won't commit. She doesn't listen, makes jokes."

"Were you hard on her?"

"Sure, I tried playing nice too." Ward insists. "I need a new strategy."

"Try no strategy." Coulson says coming around his desk and leaning against it to speak with him. "Stop thinking like an operative and start thinking like a person. Maybe Skye will let that person help her."

"Help her what?"

"Help her think like an operative." Coulson finishes gently.

It's not long that Ward has to practice that advice with Skye when he trains her in disarming someone with a gun. He holds a practice one to her head in the cargo bay-turned-training room.

"Now again, slowly, what's first?" She grabs his hand with the gun and swings it up so she can pull herself into his chest. "And then?" He asks.

She relaxes into his chest smiling to herself. "Then, things are moving too quickly. I'm a proper Southern girl, you'll make me untidy." She drawls in a Southern accent teasing him.

Ward sighs using his other hand to show her what to do next. "Twist the thumb, palm the barrel." He pushes her out of his arms frustratedly. "You're gonna die and leave us hanging out to dry, you know that? You're going in with no self-defense skills-"

"I've got a few tricks up my sleeve." She protests.

"You need muscle memory, fundamentals, the tools to turn yourself-"

"Into a whole bag of tools?" She interrupts him flippantly.

He shakes his head in irritation at her. "How did you learn computer science without committing yourself to it?"

"C.S. comes naturally to me." She tells him then hesitates - she knows what her line of thinking will take them. "I'm sorry I'm not naturally whatever you are."

He walks towards her his frustration clear on his face. "You think this came naturally to me? I had a brother who beat the crap out of me - me and my little brother, for nothing, for eating a piece of his birthday cake." He stops in front of her, keeping his eyes locked on her so she understood the severity of his words. "I had to learn to protect us, the way I am trying to protect you." He sighs. "That was my moment. You asked." He says quietly.

"Sorry. I didn't mean to push." She says remorsefully. "But I did manage to take this." Skye waves the practice gun she'd slipped from him, teasingly.

He grabs it from her with an eye-roll and steps back. "Getting the gun is one thing. Pulling the trigger - that is another." He raises the gun to her head again. "Now, again, slowly. What's first?"

After an hour or so of practice everyone meets back in the command center to go over the plan.

"Skye will walk in the front door. The only external access point to Quinn's underground facility is from a beach cove. A two-man extraction team could slip in there, but it's not easy. FitzSimmons." Coulson nods to them to speak their piece for the briefing.

"The perimeter is surrounded by a 20-foot-high neodymium laser grid. Touch it and you're toast." Fitz says.

"Dead toast." Coulson mutters. "The only way to disable the grid is to crack the system and trigger a reboot. This would give the team three seconds to cross. Of course, Quinn's too smart to allow any wireless access on his property."

"That's where I come in." Skye says.

"Yes," Simmons steps up and shows her a makeup compact. "Working compact - holds up under x-ray."

"Desert rose, to match your complexion." Fitz says and Skye tries not to smirk at him. "But wait, what's this." He mockingly asks her and shows her the blinking red lights in the mirror of the open compact. "A readout, okay? Turns green if you're in close enough proximity to a computer to gain wireless access."

"When it does, you just drop this nearby and walk out. We'll do the rest, easy as pie." Simmons finishes.

"Or it will be, if you stick to the plan." Ward says darkly and Skye takes a breath eyeing him before taking the compact from the science duo.

"Got it. Plan, green, drop, walk . . . pie." She nods to them.

Coulson steps away from the holotable with a tablet, typing into it and May intercepts him.

"I don't want to question your orders, sir."

"Good." He says brightly trying to cut off what he knows is coming and walks around her.

"But I've already seen far more combat than I bargained for." She says over his shoulder. "This two-man extraction team? It's exactly the kind of action I was hoping to avoid."

He turns to face her with a sigh. "That's why you're not on it." He tells her.

May gives him a look. "Specialist work is much different than field work, believe me." She says warningly. "When was the last time you-"

"Hall's one of ours and he's in trouble." Coulson cuts her off. "I need two men to get him out. Ward makes one." They stare at each other until May breaks, glancing away. "So that's why I'm going in. You forget, I saw plenty of action with the Avengers." He walks away from her to the holotable.

May stands there shaking her head. "And you died." She says to herself.

"Alright team, suit up." Coulson tells them.

They put their plans into action and Skye arrives at Quinn's estate in a taxi. She's dressed in a pretty magenta dress that falls mid-thigh and with a nice scoop neckline paired with gold sandal heels. When she walks through the doors she takes the chance to sip on champagne and eat an hors d'oeuvre.

An older gentleman in a navy colored suit surprises her from behind. "Who are you?" He speaks with a heavy accent and another younger man rushes up.

"Oh, apologies for his manners. He knows very little English."

"Oh, that, uh, that's - what, whatever." She stutters, caught off guard. She offers her hand and introduces herself to the older man. "Skye."

"Qasim Zaghlul."

"Big fan." Skye says impressed. "You built half of Dubai, including the Arabian blade. I  _love_ that building, it's super sci-fi. Where's your wife . . ." She waits as May relays the correct information through her COMS unit. "Nadrah?"

"Twin sons." May says.

"Staying at home with the boys?" Skye asks with a smile.

"How she doing?" Fitz appears in the command center with popcorn as they all hover over the holotable, listening through Skye's COMS.

"She's good." Simmons and May both say impressed.

"The pleasure is mine." Skye is saying. She turns away from the men trying to remember the last time she was this party three years ago and can't help basking as a party-goer. "I could get used to this, people." She addresses the team. "It's like SIRI if it worked." She turns her head and see Quinn. "Skipper to Bravo. I got eyes on top dog. The eagle is landing on it." She drawls through her coms playfully.

"What are you doing?" Simmons asks nervously from the command center.

"Sorry, I don't - I don't know. I see Quinn. I'm gonna go talk to him." She gets rid of her food and walks over to hear the tail-end of his conversation with his partners.

"I mean, that and it's effect on the industrial average." He says. Quinn is dressed in a slick grey suit and his hair combed back perfectly and Skye refuses to let her mask slip as she chuckles along with his partners.

"Yeah, right?" She asks the guy she's standing next to, drawing Quinn's attention. She tilts her head flirtatiously, tamping down the raw fury that courses through her at the sight of him, and smiles. "Ian Quinn. I'm your last-minute party crasher. Skye."

She offers her hand and he furrows his brows but smiles. "Oh, wow." He chuckles shaking her hand. "Great to meet you. This is Skye." He gestures to her as he introduces her to the rest of his group. "She's a member for the Rising Tide. They're a group of hackers." She gives them a tiny wave, nervously. "They've gotten some pretty big secrets out to the public."

"I prefer the term "hacktavist." I'm glad you've heard of our site." She tells him.

"I read it. We think very much alike - more freedom of information, less government infringing on everyone's rights - I'm a fan." He says passionately..

"That explains the invite. This is a _tough_ party to get into." She scowls playfully at him.

"Not as hard to get into as the encrypted back channel you contacted us through to request the invite." Quinn is impressed with her.

"That's sort of where I live." Skye brags lightly with a tiny smile. 

"You've gotta show me how you did that - I mean if you sign on." He said.

Skye blinks in surprise, barely remembering what's coming next. "Sign what, now?"

"I've been known to turn a few black hats into white hats, not just for vulnerability analysis, but for very creative thinking."

"A-are you offering me a job?" Skye asks Quinn and he smiles chuckling.

"Well, I didn't invite you here for your pretty face." He says. "I didn't know you had a pretty face. Yes, I want to hire you, before someone else snatches you up." He tells her and nods his head at the rest of the group before leaving for the small podium.

"That seemed to go well." May says through the coms.

"Yeah, it did." Skye answers slowly and May can practically read the disgust through her tone. She frowns down at the holotable thoughtfully.

"Many of you shareholders have been with us for years, and I see a few new names here, but I want to thank you all for traveling so far to this beautiful country - and, well, slumming it at Shaba Tal-Banar." Quinn begins his speech and draws a few laughs from the audience. "This country where we are allowed to pursue progress and profit without the stranglehold of regulations that are now choking our world. The United States government, The E.U., The DRTC, SHEILD - these are just a few of the institutions that are guilty of halting the development of new technology for anyone - except themselves. We dare defy them with a new idea." As Quinn spoke, Ward and Coulson were arriving on the beach. "They steal in and swoop it up from under us. But not today. You are all aware of what Quinn Worldwide has been able to do with basic minerals, let alone uranium or plutonium, despite these unjust restrictions that weight the scales in the other guys' favor." Skye began to inch her way through the crowd towards the mansion to try and find a computer as he continued speaking. "Well, today, I'm introducing something new. An element that will balance those scales, and I mean that quite literally. Imagine if you could control gravity. If instead of drilling for oil, it instead rose up to greet you. Imagine if you could move a super tanker's worth of cargo with a swipe of your hand. Well, we will do this, and more."

Back on the beach, Coulson is trying to profile Hall's state of mind. "This might have been a traumatic experience for Dr. Hall." He tells Ward. "He may not be the same when we find him, Ward. I'll talk him down. We don't want your personality to set him on edge."

"Great time for humor, sir." Ward snarks back. "My people skills are the least of our problems if Skye can't get us in."

Meanwhile, Skye quickly makes her way towards where she remembers Quinn's office is but finds the doors with no handle or actual locking mechanism on it. She tries to push it through.

"It's locked, but there's no lock." She tells the team through her coms.

"Eh, check for a keypad." Fitz guesses.

"Nothing," she tells him then pauses, "what, you can hack a keypad?" She asks skeptically.

"No, not over the phone." He mutters.

"Is there a reception desk?" May asks and Skye begins to remember how the next few minutes will play out.

"Okay, yeah." She says and walks over there. "Now, what do I do?" She mutters to herself.

"What are you trying to do?" Quinn appears behind her with a suspicious look on his face. Skye thinks quickly.

"Where do you work?" She asks him, slipping her phone from her purse and he frowns at her.

"Um, excuse me?"

"I mean where's your office? Do you have a wireless router in there with your computers or anything? I'm trying to call my partner to talk to him about your job offer but I can't get a signal anywhere on your property." She gestures with her phone in her hand.

"That's for a good reason." He says condescendingly.

"No, I totally understand that." Skye said waving her other hand in the air innocently. "You don't want people stealing your trade secrets or anything and I'll admit, originally I came here thinking I could poke around, see if you have any deep dark secrets I could expose, but I like your style." She swallows down her disgust and anger as she talks. "I think I could be on board with working for you. I just want to call my partner, think of moving him out here with me or something."

"Partner?" Quinn asks intrigued.

"Yeah, Miles and I have hooked up a few times but he's one of the best hackers out there and he taught me everything he knows - we've been inseparable ever since. I think if I can get him on board, he'd be willing to meet with you. And, be honest, if you want to hire _me_ , you'd want to hire more than one hacker, wouldn't you?" She asked him with a coy tilt of her head, pretending to flirt with him.

He stared down at her, clearly interested, before nodding. "That sounds like a pretty good offer," he says. "I'm a bit more concerned with the fact that you wanted to spy on my operations here."

Skye starts laughing. "Trust me, I'm not a spy. And can you really blame me? You're philanthropy is great and all but if anyone did choose to go looking into your businesses, what would they really find?" She asks him, narrowing her eyes at him playfully.

He looks amused at her. "I like you, you're sharp and you're witty. Kinda like me." Skye has to force herself not to grimace. He leans over the receptionist's desk and presses a button hidden underneath the cup of pens. The doors down the hall swing open and he nods his head at her, indicating he wants Skye to follow him.

"I have to admit, when I heard "partner" I assumed boyfriend was somewhere in that title."

"Oh, no. Recently single actually." Skye tells him as he escorts her into his office looking around impressed. "This is nice. My office had less space, more wheels." She tells him. "Wow, a view of the ocean  _and_ the pool."

"Not a bad place to do business."

The rest of the team on the BUS are still listening in awe that Skye distracted Quinn and got into his office.

"Got the dispatch leaking Hall's location, user's an alias." May tells the science duo.

"Oh, can you trace the DHCP server-"

"Trace is running, but it'll take time." May answers Fitz's question. "Our girl?"

"I thought she was done for but she's just sweet-talked her way into Quinn's office." Simmons sounds impressed and May looks up in surprise as well.

"How'd she manage that?"

"She probably just used her, um, uh . . ." The women looked up at Fitz sharply as he had his hands in front of his chest, gesturing exactly what he thought Skye had used to convince Quinn into his office. Fitz stuttered trying to find another word but couldn't. "Uh . . . uh . . . ah, boobs." Fitz hung his head bashfully as May rolled her eyes.

"Ugh, that's the  _only_ explanation?" Simmons asks him. 

Skye was speaking again and the three of them all froze as they heard her mention SHIELD.

"You do know that SHIELD is circling Malta, right?"

"I do." He said warily. "The question is how do _you_?" She raises an eyebrow at him, trying to let him make his own assumptions. "They got to you didn't they?" He squints at her then shakes his head. "Do you want to tell me what the _hell_ is going on?"

"SHIELD picked me up in L.A. I helped them in a crisis and now they want to recruit me."

"Of course they did, what about your partner?"

"He's stayed off their radar so far - he's kind of my failsafe if I want out, but I've been playing along. Talk about insider info - I have a _bunk_ on their plane."

"What is she doing?" Fitz hisses to the other two women on the BUS and May has a tiny smile on her face.

"She's playing him." She explains softly. "She's giving him just enough truth to lull him into a false sense of security."

"I've been gathering intel." Skye is saying. "Biding my time, until I could become useful. I thought this qualified."

"Why would they trust you with a covert operation like this?" Quinn asks her.

"Something about SHIELD not breaking international laws. They had no other options whereas, I like to keep mine open." Skye cocks her head flirtatiously smiling at him. "I think this the perfect opportunity for me to jump ship and have my partner come with me."

Meanwhile, still on the beach, Coulson and Ward finally make it up the hill and see a sign with radioactive symbols drawn on it. Coulson grabs some dirt from the ground and throws it into the air. The laser fence activates and fries it. The two agents exchange a worried look.

"Next patrol any minute now." Ward says.

"Skye is in Quinn's office but she hasn't got the chance to look for a signal yet." May's voice comes through their coms.

Ward looks alarmed. "Abort is not an option but if she's compromised-"

"She's still our only way in to get to Dr. Hall."

"And we're their only way out." Ward concludes. They hear voices and duck down behind some bushes.

Skye fiddles with her purse on the couch in Quinn's office. "So you're saying they wanted to rope me in because I pose a _genuine_ threat."

"Yes, and fit their profile."

"Profile?" Skye asks him.

"Sure. You're a criminal, you have a warrant somewhere."

Skye chuckles. "Hell no." He looks surprised at that. "I only get caught if I want to." She tells him and he nods his head, impressed.

"Alright, well you have a specialized skill set."

"I try to stay humble but fail."

"No family." He assumes and she cocks an eyebrow at him. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to hit a nerve," he apologizes and steps closer, leaning over the couch, "but that is what these people do - SHIELD. They prey on fear, and loneliness and desperation, and then they offer a home to those who have no one else to turn to. I can offer you something better." He tells her.

Back on the beach, the patrol walk right by Coulson and Ward's bush and they jump out, quickly taking the guards out. Coulson tries to disassemble one of their guns and can't quite unlock the magazine from the barrel.

"Damn. I'm a little rusty I guess." He looks up at Ward who in turn, grabs the gun from Coulson and tosses it into the laser fence which disintegrates it. "Guys, clock's ticking, where's Skye?" Coulson asks through the coms.

Quinn is still trying to convince Skye to work with him. "If you stay with us, there's no secrets, no lies, no agenda. You're free to do what you do, without big brother watching over you. But first," Quinn walks around the couch to sit down next to her, "you have to tell me exactly what agenda SHIELD sent you in here with."

Skye scoffs at him. "Come on, Ian. I can call you Ian, right?" He nods. "You know exactly what they want me to do." She opens her purse and takes out the makeup compact, opening it and looking at the mirror. She pretends to check her complexion as she watches the red blinking lights switch to green. She sets the compact down on the table then turns back to him.

"And what is that?" He asks her expectantly.

Skye rolled her eyes. "They wanted me to bat my eyes, see if I could get you talking about your college buddy, Dr. Franklin Hall."

"Hall." He growled.

Back on the BUS there's a dinging sound and Simmons straightens as May spins around anxiously. "We're in!"

"She's done it!" Simmons says excitedly. Fitz looks up from his snacking as May turns to him.

"Fitz, you're up."

"Oh, Mother of all things. Move, move, move!" He yells as he rushes around the holotable and begins typing furiously.

On the beach, Coulson and Ward glance at one of the unconscious guards' radios blare to life.

" _We have a man down! Hostiles on the east ridge!_ "

Shots are fired and Coulson and Ward both duck as they wait impatiently for Fitz to reset Quinn's system so they can jump past the laser grid.

"We need a reset here, Fitz!" Coulson says through his coms. More shots are fired connecting with the laser fence. "Fitz!"

"Saying his name repeatedly does not promote productivity!" Simmons tells Coulson nervously.

"Okay, go!" Fitz tells them.

"Or maybe it does." Simmons murmurs.

Coulson runs through as the laser grid disappears but Ward is stuck behind a bush. "System rebooting in two . . . one . . . now!" Fitz counts down and Ward jumps past it, just in time. They race up the steps to the estate.

"I'll look for Dr. Hall down in the lab." Coulson says.

"I'll get Skye." Ward tells him and they split off in different directions.

Quinn shakes his head back in his office. "No, you can't be the only angle. SHIELD is thorough enough to know about me and my exploits. It takes more than a pretty face to disarm me." He tells Skye.

Guards walk through a side door to Quinn's office. "Sir, we have a security breach." Quinn stands up in alarm and Skye slowly stands too, collecting her purse.

"Oh, the timing on that was perfect." She smiles widely at them, reaching for her compact but Quinn grabs it from her, opening it and seeing the flashing light. He sighs in frustration and breaks it easily. He turns to his three guards and Skye moves quickly.

As Quinn turns back around after drawing a gun from his bald guard, Skye grabs his wrist, twisting it hard so that he cries out in pain, dropping it into her free hand and twirls around him, throwing her elbow into the back of his head so he stumbles forward. His bald guard however, throws his fist and manages to cuff her ear, dislodging her coms. She kicks out at his knee and knocks him to the floor with a yelp and backs away towards the balcony. The guard struggles to his feet and looks at her impressed.

"Kid's got balls." He growls to Quinn.

"Thanks, but . . . yuck." She looks at him disgustedly.

Meanwhile, Coulson finds the underground lab where Dr. Hall is typing into a computer system much like the team's holotable.

"Dr. Hall. Agent Coulson." He introduces himself quickly. "We have an exit strategy."

"SHIELD?" Hall asks not looking at him.

"Yes, sir." Coulson confirms. "Let's get you out of here."

"I'm sorry, Mr. Coulson, but I'm right where I'm supposed to be." Hall tells him.

Coulson sighs. "I'll be honest, this might have come up in our talks but our strategy did not take into consideration you saying that."

Back on the BUS, May is finally concluding the trace on the DHCP server that leaked out Hall's location.

**Alias Identified**

**Camera Memory Loading**

Video pops up showing May that Hall leaked his own location onto the web for Quinn to find specifically. Hall had wanted to be kidnapped and taken by Ian Quinn.

"Oh no." She murmurs to herself.

"Look," Coulson tries talking to Dr. Hall even as he continues typing into his computer table. "I don't know what Quinn is promising you, but-"

"An opportunity." Hall answers easily. Behind the glass in a separate open room is a similar looking device that held the tiny dime-sized mass of gravitonium that was originally found at the crime scene but on a much larger scale with much  _more_ gravitonium.

"We can't let Quinn have control of this!" Coulson gestures to the element. "It's too dangerous!"

"We can't let _anyone_ have control of this!" Hall tells Coulson. "That's why I'm here - to bury it at the bottom of the ocean, with  _him_."

Three massive circular bars surrounding the gravitonium begin to spin, the smallest and innermost one picking up speed first as it circles diagonally, the second one spinning opposite of the first diagonally and a bit slower, and the outermost bar much slower than the other two but circling vertically. The bars' speed up and electric bolts seem to emanate from the bars into the gravitonium, making it react.

May's voice echoes through Coulson's coms as she relays what he's already figured out. "Coulson. The leak came from-"

"Dr. Hall." He finishes for her. "Yeah, I'm getting that."

"All the petitions and embargoes in the world couldn't stop Ian. He grows more powerful every day. And then I get word he's found this." Coulson turns from the massive device and gravitonium to Dr. Hall. The room begins to shake as the gravitonium is activated. "I'm sorry, Mr. Coulson. I had to make a choice." He presses something on the table and the innermost bar of the device is shooting thousands of volts of electricity into the gravitonium. The room shakes even more and cupboards fly open, dropping hundreds of containers and glass and lab equipment onto the floor, breaking and shattering.

"Something tells me that wasn't the "off" button." Coulson manages to shout as the laws of gravity are defied and he's lifted up off his feet and thrown to the side, knocked out from the force he was thrown into the wall. When he comes to, he's behind a metal table on it's side with blood across his temple. "Guys," he talks into his coms. "We need to talk."

May is walking down the stairs of the BUS and sighs in relief in hearing his voice. "Lost you for a minute." She tells him as she steps into the lab. "We're aware of the problem, sir. Hall  _wanted_ to Quinn to kidnap him?"

"Yeah, why would he do that?" Fitz asks, his accent thickening with his frustration as he hovers over his computer.

"What is wrong with him?" Simmons asks anxiously.

"Quinn built a gravity generator, like the one we found but bigger." Coulson answers. "Hall knew Quinn would need him to control it's raw power, but Hall just wanted to unleash it." He struggles to his feet still dazed from the blow to his head and his body.

"The one we found was 2.5 centimeters in diameter - it stopped a semi. How big are we talking?" Simmons asks Coulson.

"Twelve feet." He answers. "It'll definitely take down the entire compound."

"No, it'll do more than that." Fitz mumbles.

"It'll sink the place." Simmons says frantically.

"Work a solution," Coulson says, still crouching behind the table. "I'll disconnect the power before things get . . . crazy." He stands up and sees that he's standing on a wall of the room. The computer table Hall had been working on had been nailed to the floor but all the equipment and papers and glass that had fallen out of the cupboards were lying on the wall as if it was the ground.

Hall is staggering around, adapting quickly to the new gravity of the room with Coulson's gun in his hand.

 _It must've fallen out of my holster when gravity stopped working and he'd grabbed it_ , Coulson assumes.

"They can't help you." Hall tells Coulson. "Soon, it'll reach an exponential acceleration state." Hall says as he finds a bottle of whiskey and a scratched but still intact glass lying on the ceiling and picks them up, righting a chair as well so he can sit down, all while holding Coulson's gun. "I'm sorry." He apologizes to Coulson sincerely.

"My team's here - good people." Coulson tries to appeal to Hall.

"Sworn to protect all mankind?" The older scientist asks. "That's what I'm doing, I promise, making things right." He opens the whiskey and pours it into the glass. The liquid looks strange as it seems to arc wide into the glass. Hall chuckles as he takes a sip, just as gravity seems to be shifting in the room again.

Coulson falls into the wall while Hall stands up and begins to walk up the ceiling and onto the upright back wall.

Meanwhile, Skye holds the gun up to Quinn's head, his guards lingering behind him have their own guns pointed at her while the bald one still stands off to the side with his hands raised.

"Don't you get it?" Quinn asks her with his hands out as if trying to placate her. "SHIELD's against everything you stand for. They're Big Brother."

"Maybe, but they're the nice big brother who stands up for his helpless little brother when he's getting beat up because he ate a piece of cake that he wasn't - you know, you kidnapped a person!" She rambles, trying to remember when Ward was going to come.

"I set him free!" Quinn protests. "I saved him! And I could've saved you!" He says disappointedly. Skye tightens her grip on the gun, thinking quickly.

If she shot him now, all his money that was funding the Centipede Project and Garrett as the Clairvoyant with his Cybertek investments would just disappear. She could stop him from coming after her in the future right now . . . but that wasn't the plan and she had to allow things to play out as close to her original timeline as possible so as not to disrupt anything too soon, no matter how much rage and anger she could feel just waiting to burst out at the man who shot her.

Ward entered the estate looking at all the rooms and misleading hallways. "This place is massive." He muttered. "Where am I heading?" He asks.

"Southwest corner." May answers as she looks at the map on the screen in the lab. "Ward, tell me you've got things covered on the ground." The ground shakes and Ward looks down in surprise as she continues talking. "I can't do a damn thing from out here."

"I'm working on it." He says as the ground begins to shake again.

Quinn and his guards stumble forward and Skye backs away from them towards the open balcony door. "What are they doing?" Quinn shouts at Skye but she just smirks at him. "You have to talk, you have no other way out of this! You're expendable to SHIELD! They sent you in here with nothing! Do you even have what it takes to pull the trigger?" He asks her smugly.

The anger that was just bubbling on the surface whites out her vision for just a second and Skye's lips tighten into a thin smile. She walks towards him, her eyes darken threateningly at him and he looks startled at the sheer amount of hatred shining from her almost black eyes now.

"You have no idea what I'm capable of." Her voice is complete ice as a chill seems to seep through his bones at her cold words. "You're nothing but a _pawn_." She says condescendingly. "Tell your _boss_ , I'm coming for him. And there's nothing he can do to stop me." Her tone is dead serious and Quinn can't help it as a shiver runs through him.

Then suddenly she shoots the gun twice. Quinn collapses with a scream as blood covers his right shoulder. Skye whirls around darting out of her heels onto the balcony and jumping over the edge into the pool.

"Get her!" Quinn shouts at them, still clutching his bleeding shoulder with his opposite hand. They start for the balcony but the entire estate shakes again and they're all knocked to the floor.

Quinn stares at the pens on the ground that seem to hover in the air, before slowly following the normal rules of gravity. He sighs. "Hall. We need to evacuate." He tells his guards. "Get the chopper. Now!" He yells at them.

Meanwhile, Dr. Hall is still holding Coulson at gunpoint anchored to the wall by the strange gravity, explaining himself to the SHIELD agent.

"All I had to do to get access to Quinn's lab was drop little clues, create a puzzle for him to solve. Quinn likes to  _feel_ smart." Hall explained to Coulson.

"So you leaked your location. Why not try reasoning with him?" Coulson asked.

"You can't reason with an addict." Hall sneered at him. "And he's addicted to exploiting opportunities. He never gives a thought to the friends, ecosystems, future generations left ruined in his wake."

"Like Agents Fitz and Simmons, your former students? I've got them in my ear right now telling me you're not a bad guy. We could've worked  _with_ you on this." Coulson says as the gravitonium reacts again and the gravity in the room shifts again, knocking Coulson off his feet and causing Hall to stumble.

"SHIELD?" Hall is surprised at Coulson's words. "SHIELD is just as guilty of the same thing - experimentation without thought of consequence! Your search for an unlimited power source brought an alien invasion." Hall accuses Coulson and the agent nods, sighing.

"Fair point." He admits thinking of the parallels between SHIELD and HYDRA and starts to get to his feet as Hall staggers closer.

"This element is far too powerful for you, for him, for anyone! I don't have to tell you that." The room shakes again. "You're feeling it now!"

Up above ground, Skye is sprinting through the estate trying to remember her steps to find Ward but ends up circling around the back across the patio steps that are esconced in water. But she's too late, Quinn's thugs show up and she turns, running in the opposite direction only to find more. She's thinking quickly but remembers Ward is just around the corner. She struggles as two grab her from behind but a third man approaches her by the front. She kicks her leg back but it doesn't do much since she ditched her heels.

Ward appears behind them and within minutes, all three are down in the surrounding water and in a dump on the patio steps. Skye sighs, stepping over to him and reaching out and grabbing his vest as she sways on her bare feet in sheer emotional exhaustion.

"Are you hurt?" Ward asks her and Skye shakes her head. "Just follow my orders, I'll get us out of here." He tells her and she nods at him.

Back in the lab, the gravity shifts in the room again and the gun goes flying loose. Both men grab for it and Hall reaches it first, but Coulson punches him and takes it back. They're standing on the glass of the window that leads to the gravitonium as they face off once more.

"I see the future, Mr. Coulson." Hall tells him, resigned to his fate. "And it's a catastrophe."

"I just see a lot of people in trouble." Coulson says and reaches up towards a large silver cord and tears it away from the monitor. "Nothing!" He says loudly for the coms. "FitzSimmons, I tried to cut the power - it's still going."

"Find a catalyst!" FitzSimmons answer together. "Something to create a chemical reaction in the core." Simmons finishes explaining.

"It's not too late to do the right thing." Coulson tells Hall. "Help me find a catalyst-"

"I  _am_ doing the right thing." Hall insists. "A completely selfless act. I know that history doesn't celebrate what didn't happen, they'll call this a tragedy. They won't understand the good I did here." He says looking through the window to the wild element beneath him. Coulson lifts his gaze and meets Skye's and Ward's eyes through the locked lab door window.

"Killing innocent people?" Coulson questions angrily.

"Saving millions." Hall protests quietly. "We have to live with the choices we make, but sometimes we have to die with them, too.

Coulson stares at him for a long minute before nodding. "I understand. You made a hard call." Hall nod. "And now, I have to make mine." Coulson shoots at the window below his feet and jumps up at the last second to hang from a loose cord while Hall falls through the shattered glass and into the gravitonium which swallows him whole. His body acts as the catalyst and gravity rights itself within the lab.

Ward and Skye unlock the door and come rushing through to make sure AC is fine and he stands up again, staring at the gravity generator slowing down.

He's panting as they all stand in front of the now shattered window as the gravity generator finally stops and the gravitonium just hovers there in the middle a writhing metal-colored mass.

 

"Say it back to me." Coulson is saying back on the BUS in his office speaking to someone through video chat.

"Deepest level of the fridge, unmarked vault, no access granted." An agent specifies Coulson's orders.

"And no recorded entry, I don't want it listed. I don't want it flagged for the slingshot. Anyone finds out - you're responsible . . . and suffering." Coulson threatens. "Understood?"

"Yes, sir." The agent answers.

"That's what Hall would've wanted." Coulson murmurs as he turns the video chat off. He grabs the gun lying on his desk as he tries to disassemble it. "I used to have this down. Should be just muscle memory." He mutters to himself.

"You're making a habit of it, sir." May says from behind him, leaning against the doorway.

"Trying," He says to the gun. "Guess I am a little rusty."

"Of these close calls, I mean. I don't enjoy running back end." She tells him. He sighs and turns to her.

"You want off the plane? Go ahead."

"I want _in_." She steps forward. "Reporting for combat, next time it's up."

 "You committed to the cause or just watching my back?" Coulson asks her.

"Same thing." She gives him the tiniest of grins. "And you  _are_ a little rusty." She says as she walks away.

May finds Skye in the cockpit, sitting in the co-pilot's seat her knees pulled up to her chest, dressed as if she's going to go train with Ward. May sits down without a word, waiting patiently as she begins flipping switches and pressing buttons.

"In six months, Ian Quinn is going to shoot me twice in the stomach because he answers to someone else, someone who is trying to figure out what kind of drug brought Coulson back to life and he wants to use it in the Centipede serum." Skye says but May doesn't stop fiddling with the dials and dashboard in front of her. "For the next year, nearly all the cases we take on are going to be connected to John Garrett trying to create a super soldier serum that can save his life and make him invincible. I didn't kill Quinn, but I shot him twice in the shoulder. Thought I could slow them down if only just a little bit. I know I could've saved Dr. Hall and stopped the gravitonium from sinking the entire island. But I had to make a choice, let him live, and have him acting as a wildcard in the long run or letting him make the sacrifice he was trying to make in the first place."

She falls silent, chewing on her lip and May sighs, turning to look at the girl in front of her.

"You don't have to explain to me about making the hard choice, Skye. Been there, done that already." She said focusing on the controls again. "But I understand you wanting to talk to someone, about everything."

Skye hesitates. "Is that an invitation or a warning?" She asks lightly. May meets her gaze with one of her non-expressions and Skye can't help giving her a small smile. "Thanks, May."

"Go make nice with Ward." May says in a low voice and Skye bites back a grin.

"Yes, ma'am."

"And don't call me ma'am." She rolls her eyes.

"You got it."

Skye heads down and hangs up the punching bag in the cargo bay-turned-training room. She wraps her hands and starts practicing her jab cross that Ward had been teaching her. She's there for about twenty minutes, having already worked up a sweat when Ward comes out of the lounge area of the second floor and sees her practicing. He walks down the stairs slowly, watching her form.

"You and your brothers, where'd you grow up?" Skye asks him when he's on her level.

"Massachusetts, mostly." He answers.

"A house?" Comes the next question between punches.

"You didn't?" His brow furrows at the thought.

She pauses, glancing over at him as she steadies the bag. "One house. The Brodys." She walks over to her water, panting and takes a long drink. "I was nine." She tells him. "Sent me back to St. Agnes after a month. Said I wasn't a good fit."

"Foster parents." Ward assumes. "Your first?"

"My third." She corrects him and turns as he steps closer. "I had heard it before but, this time was different . . ."

"Cause you wanted them to like you."

She nods, glancing up at him. "Bad." She says seriously. She considers how much more to say then sighs. "I called her "Mom" once . . . tried it out." She fidgets with her gloves then stills. "Guess it wasn't a good fit." She says lightly and walks back to the punching bag. She throws a couple of punches before meeting his eyes again. "Hoping for something and losing it hurts more than never hoping for anything." She tells him sadly.

"We won't turn our back." Ward says as he braces the punching bag for her.

"Doesn't matter." Skye practically whispers. "I made my choice." She says still throwing her jabs. "I want this. Bad." Her next punch is powerful and he looks down at her in surprise before bracing it more strongly. "And I know there's a truth serum." She says seriously.

"Whatever you say, Rookie." Ward teases. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you guys liked this one!
> 
> Please feel free to comment and critique.
> 
> Love any and all feedback. If you guys have ideas for upcoming episodes/chapters. Let me know. I have a vague outline of how I want this to go, but I'm open for anything you guys might like.


	5. Eye Spy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Coulson picks a familiar case that has Skye nervously wondering if she should have the team go straight for the source or stick with what she knows will come.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, I am one of those typical writers where if I lose inspiration - I totally lose inspiration. I haven't been in the right mindset to write this filler chapter and at least finish with the same speeches and dialogues for months and I apologize for that. I'm awful I know.
> 
> BUT, I finished this and I'm doing much better. Don't take my word for it, cause again I'm awful, but I hope to have the next chapter up by the end of the week or by next Wednesday.
> 
> Again, don't take my word for it.
> 
> For those of you who like my other works. I hope you liked Introducing Quake, I've been working on another chapter that will definitely take away from the ending of Season 2 by merging the Avengers helping solve Shadow SHIELD's problems and Skye's mother and father resolved very differently.
> 
> Hope you guys like this :)

 

Coulson lets himself into the cockpit and leans against the wall, watching the clouds fly by while May stoically pilots the plane.

"Maybe I should learn to fly." He says conversationally. "It's not too late, right? I could learn." She lets out a tiny breath. "What do you like best? The freedom, the view-"

"The solitude." She answers simply. He nods politely.

"Got it. See you in Sweden." He says and leaves the cockpit. The tips of her lips turn up as she adjusts the controls, before she regains control of the minuscule smile and erases it from her face.

Ward is down in the lab eyeing a dendrotoxin bullet in his fingers.

"I only get one shot. And it has to knock a person back, as well as out." He's saying.

"Which is why we're perfecting this little beauty." Fitz turns with a sleek but large looking gun in his hands. ".45 caliber cartridges, semi-automatic. Each mag . . ." The Scot slips it in and locks it into place in the gun. "Contains eight therapeutic rounds of dendrotoxin."

"In case you miss." Simmons smiles from behind him and Ward turns, giving her a dirty look. "Or have multiple assailants." She presumes nervously.

Ward reaches for it but Fitz pulls it back out of reach. "Yeah, we're gonna have this new Night-Night pistol working in no time. Okay?" Fitz turns and retreats back to his desk where he begins fiddling with it.

"Great." Ward says. "One thing - we're not calling it that."

Simmons turns back from her microscope and meets Fitz's eyes clearing her throat pointedly. "Told you." She grins at him.

Fitz grimaces. "Yes we - yes we are." He says determinedly and sits down with the pistol.

"Have you seen, Skye?" Coulson asks Ward as he walks out of the lab.

"Not since weapons training." He answers passing him on the stairs up to the lounge area.

"Has she stopped saying "bang" when she pulls the trigger?" Coulson asks amused.

"Mostly. Now if she could just learn the difference between the safety release and the magazine release, we'll be making real progress." Ward says in a resigned tone as he continues up the stairs. He pauses at the top. "You know the first day we brought her on the BUS, she took my weapon off my person and disassembled it easily. I'm wondering if that was just a fluke." He rolls his eyes then escapes the room.

Coulson shakes his head, hiding his smile before glancing at the vehicles parked and locked in front of him. He walks over to the SUV and knocks on the back window. It rolls down after a second revealing Skye's smiling face.

"What's up, Phil?" He asks perkily.

"I'd prefer you not call me Phil." He requests and she looks down at her laptop.

"Okay, you're the boss . . . AC" She glances up quickly to see his reaction and he just sighs. "Just missing my van a bit, taking a little "me" time."

"I want your help with something." He says in a quiet voice. She inhales sharply and sits up straighter as if in excitement.

"Hit me with it."

"You ever rob a bank?" She frowns thoughtfully. A quick image of herself wearing dark clothes, heavy makeup and long dyed hair escaping a bank flashes across her vision quickly before she shakes her head and smiling shortly at him.

"No."

"An armored car?"

"Nope."

"How about a casino?"

"Should I be offended?" She asks him playfully.

"Somebody is stealing millions of dollars in diamonds. They've found a way to crack the security systems. I want you to figure out their exploit." He tells her and a look of understanding crosses Skye's face as she remembers what case his questions relate to, but before she can decide whether or not to tell him what she knows he turns around and heads back upstairs.

They land in Sweden shortly after AC's conversation with Skye and he briefs her and May on the case he picked at the crime scene in the subway station.

"Yesterday, twenty-five men, all military, were hired by one of the largest gem brokers in the world. They dressed the men in identical outfits, gave each one a randomly assigned briefcase, and sent them along twenty-five different routes here in Stockholm. No one knew which case contained the diamonds, but they were still stolen."

"Why the Kabuki Theater?" May asked.

"They were afraid because somebody's targeting diamonds - an armored car in Milan, a safe in Monte Carlo, and now this - over $30 mil total. Each theft occurred despite heavy security."

"They sound like inside jobs." May says.

"A lot of people share that opinion." Coulson crouches down inside the empty subway at the blood on the ground.

"You don't." Skye tells him and he glances up at her. "CCTV cameras catch any of the action?"

"FitzSimmons is checking." Coulson answers. "The system went dark for an hour. They think it was hacked."

"It was the same thieves each time?" May questions.

"Yes, but it was just one thief - a woman." Coulson explains and stands up, pacing the small space. "And she did it all with her eyes closed."

"Eyewitnesses I.D. her?"

"Black, athletic build, late twenties-early thirties."

"So you asked how she could've cracked the system." Skye says stepping forward. "I have a pitch, but it's  _way_ outside the box."

"I live outside the box." Coulson deadpans.

She gives him a skeptical look but then shakes her head to clear her focus. "There are people in the world with superpowers, right? What if this woman has ESP or something?"

"There are no credible studies that support precognition, telepathy, or extrasensory perception." May tells her and Skye has to work hard not to smile, her thoughts immediately going to Professor Xavier, Jean and Raina.

"Okay, so science says no. But this woman knew impossible things, and why did she close her eyes? That's either random or totally important. Was she listening . . . or was she reading minds?" Skye widens her eyes at the two agents in front of her, tapping the side of her head but neither of them look amused. She sighs.

"So, you want to tell us what we're really looking at here?" Coulson asks her and Skye glances at them both before sighing.

"Look, three years of memories can get a little blurry. I'm sorry I can't give you a play-by-play of how this case turns out-"

"Stop." May tells her and Skye's mouth shuts with a snap. "You know exactly what's going to happen here, but if you don't want to tell us yet, just admit that. We don't need any more secrets. We can't understand exactly what you're going through and how much thought goes into each sentence you say or action you do. But we need you to be honest with us."

Skye takes a breath before letting it out slowly. "Honestly, from what I _do_ remember . . . you're not gonna like this case." They all stare at each other for a minute before Skye gives them a small smile and waves her phone at them. "I'm gonna go play with my phone now." She sits down as May turns to Coulson.

"Why does H.Q. want us to investigate these heists?" May asks Coulson.

"They don't. I picked this op. Any luck?" He asks Skye.

"Yep. I'm getting full bars." She says. "Which means if I was down here and twenty-five guys were in scary red masks, you know what I would do?" She stands up and shows them the photos she pulled up on her phone. "Instagram."

They reconvene back on the BUS in his office to look at the photos that Skye managed to download of the crime scene before and after the woman attacked the men in red masks on the subway.

"It's amazing." Coulson says as they flip through the photos on his big screen in his office. "Every year this part of our job gets easier. Between Facebook, Instagram, and Flickr, people are surveilling themselves."

"With many filters to choose from." Skye quips. "I could do this pretty well when I was hacking for the Rising Tide, but you guys tag and search in ways the rest of us never even dreamed of."

"I can run facial-recognition software on the photos, cross-reference them with our criminal databases." May offers Coulson, crossing her arms.

"You don't have to." Coulson stops on a picture and zooms in on the woman in the background. "That's the thief. Her name's Akela Amador." He identifies her.

"You're certain?" May confirms.

"I should be. I trained her." Coulson says solemnly. "Akela Amador was a SHIELD agent." He begins to brief them on what he knows of her as they walk downstairs and through the lounge towards the command center. "Seven years ago, she led a raid on one of Vanchat's gulags. Everyone believed that she and the other two agents on the mission were killed. I had my doubts. So I sent in a second team, just in case. They found a lot of carnage but couldn't confirm that any of it was Amador - left the possibility open."

"That's why you chose this op - when you heard about the heists." May accuses him.

"There are only a few women in the world who could pull off something so impossible. Since you're on the BUS, I thought it had to be her." Coulson explained snarkily.

"Swedish customs confirmed that Amador left the country using an alias on a Swedish passport." Ward tells them in the command center. "She flew into Belarus, bought a train ticket to a town called Zloda. I've also put together a list of individuals who could fence that many diamonds." He swipes the information from the holotable to the screen. "There's been no contact or activity." Ward says.

"Maybe she's saving them for a rainy day, buying something special." Coulson quips as he stares at the screen. "Let's focus on finding Amador." He turns to the other three.

"I'll let H.Q. know she's alive so they can assist with the manhunt."

"I'd like to hold off on that, until we know more." Coulson nods to May and she hides her surprise well. "Contact Belarus authorities. Find us a place to park the BUS." He glances at Ward. "Put together a list of inns, hotels, and pensions near Zloda. There can't be that many of them." He tells Ward. "We'll find her."

He and May both leave the command center to follow Coulson's orders.

"I'm not so special after all." Skye says out loud and Coulson turns to her with a frown. "I'm not your first protegee. Relax, I'm teasing." She says with a smile. "I know I'm not a protegee. Hell, I'm not even a real, live SHIELD agent yet."

"You two couldn't be more different." Coulson says and turns back to her picture on the screen. "Amador was smart, talented, fearless."

"Wow, there's nothing in common." Skye said sarcastically.

"Let me finish." Coulson lightly scolded her. "She didn't play well with others, found little value in teamwork. I thought I could instill those qualities in her, so I pushed her . . . maybe too hard."

"Don't blame yourself because this chick was _dragged_ to the dark side. Whatever path she went down, whatever weird stuff she got into, not all of them were her own choices. It's up to us to bring her in, safely." Skye told him, leaving the command center. Coulson frowned thoughtfully at her words.

By the time, the plane has landed, Coulson has already gotten them transportation to Zloda. He rents out a nice white van and the team, minus May, drives into town.

"How exciting." Simmons says. "I've dreamed of visiting Zloda since I was a schoolgirl."

"Zloda, Belarus?" Fitz asks skeptically. "A dream come true? Really?"

"It's the birthplace of Nobel physicist Zhores Alferov. I mean, technically, he's from Vitebsk, but that's less than an hour from here, and I'm a bit disappointed that you didn't know that." Simmons lightly scolds her partner.

Skye can't help rolling her eyes fondly at the pair.

"Well, no, of course I know who that is, father of heterostructure transistors, thank you very much." He says proudly. "We're all well aware of that. I'm just a little bit preoccupied. Our first and only other time in the field, wasn't exactly a picnic, was it?" He reminds them nervously.

Coulson turns around in his seat at Fitz's words. "You guys are only here to search for Amador electronically. You won't even need to leave the van." He tells them.

" _BUS to Short Bus_." May's voice comes over the coms.

"Go for Short Bus." Ward responds as he drives.

"Next time I'll decide what we call ourselves, okay?" Coulson says quietly to Ward and he looks over, eyebrows raised and lifting a hand innocently.

" _H.Q. has requested a status update._ "

"What'd you tell them?" Coulson asks her.

" _That we're tracking a potential suspect, nothing more._ " May answers evenly.

"I owe you one." He says gratefully.

" _More like three_." She says dryly.

Eventually, they finally arrive down the street from a hostel that Coulson and Ward will check out. They gather their things and get ready to leave.

"If Amador's here, she'll have to contact her buyer. Scan for cellphone transmissions, encrypted emails, anomalous broadcast signatures. Call us if you find anything that indicates her presence." Coulson orders the younger three as he checks his gun and gets out of the van.

"Maintain radio silence unless you really need help." Ward tells them as well, opening his door.

"Well, what exactly defines 'needing help?'" Fitz calls out as Ward slips out of the driver's seat and then closes the door.

Coulson and Ward head up the street and Ward glances at his C.O. a few times before striking up conversation.

"I can only imagine how hard this must be for you, sir - betrayed by someone you trained and believed in."

Coulson turns a corner with him, constantly scanning his surroundings as they walk. "We don't have all the facts yet."

"True, but I have to assume the worst." Ward says. "That Amador sold out the other two agents on her mission. Wonder what she got in exchange." He suggests in a dark tone. Coulson sighs, his own thoughts turning towards Ward and his own status as a Hydra agent inside SHIELD.

"I don't know, but until we do, I'm not gonna assume anything." Coulson tells him.

Back in the van, Simmons and Fitz were setting things up while Skye hooked up her laptop.

"There's barely electricity in this town. Can't be too hard to find our mystery woman." Simmons commented as she worked.

"Unless she already knows we're here." Skye said solemnly, a teasing glint in her eyes.

"No, you're not suggesting some sort of precognition or telepathy because . . ." Simmons started nervously.

"I know - it doesn't exist." Skye rolled her eyes. "And not long ago, I would've dumped ESP in the "aliens and portals are for crazy people" pile. But now . . ." She left the implications before focusing on her laptop. "Found a server."

Ward's phone rings as he and Coulson walk across the street.

"Did you locate Amador?" He automatically asks.

"What? No, not yet." Skye admits. "But we've found a broadcast with some weird signal encrypted into it."

"You think Amador might be communicating on that signal?" Ward asks her.

"Maybe, but I called with an equally pressing question for you, my S.O. What are we supposed to do if we have to pee?"

Ward closes his eyes in frustration and takes a breath before responding. "You broke protocol because you need a bathroom break?"

"It was a really, really long drive, and everyone's nervous." Skye rationalizes as Fitz and Simmons both nod reassuringly at her.

"There's a container at the bottom of the blue chest." Ward tells her. Skye relays the information to the scientists and Simmons begins emptying the blue cooler until she comes upon an empty water bottle. She shows it to Skye and Fitz with a disgusted look on her face and Skye's face goes blank.

"Not the water bottle." She deadpans into the phone.

"That's the one." Comes the answer.

"Did you never learn the thing where boy parts and girl parts are different, and our parts aren't penises?" She asks sarcastically.

"Agent Coulson and I are trying to find a dangerous criminal." Ward impresses into his tone. "If there's nothing else pressing . . ."

"Well, listen, Fitz wants to know if you packed any snacks."

"Cause I'm feeling a bit peckish." He calls through the phone.

The line goes dead and Skye blinks twice in surprise. "Uh, hell-hello?" She glances down at the phone and raises her eyebrows at FitzSimmons. "He hung up." She says indignantly.

Coulson and Ward enter a small hotel and greet the older lady at the desk.

"I'm Agent Coulson, this is Agent Ward. We're looking for this young woman." He pulls out his phone with the photograph of Akela Amador.

"Oh, she's my angel." The lady says pleasantly.

"Why do you say that?" Ward asks curiously.

"She has gift - knows things." The lady says. "She told me to go to doctor. He found a tumor. I'm having surgery next week. This girl saved me." She raves at the two men. The two agents exchange dubious looks.

Meanwhile, back at the van, Fitz is having trouble with the signal Skye found.

"I can't stabilize it." Fitz sighs as he fiddles with the monitor. "There's an encrypted local signal competing."

"Mirror it over." Skye orders as she types into her laptop. "I have a couple Rising Tide exploits that might work."

Fitz pushes a few buttons and similar images show up on her screen and she immediately begins hacking the signal. "One last thing." She murmurs out loud and a loud clinking sounds from her speakers. She smiles. "Ta-da, and you're welcome." She tells FitzSimmons smugly.

At the hotel, Coulson leans over the desk. "It's very important that we talk with her." He tells the lady.

"With her gift, I'm sure she knows you're coming." The lady says ominously.

FitzSimmons and Skye lean over the monitor together staring at the video feed they found.

"Russian tv's kinda boring." Skye comments as the video shows a street where a white van is parked on the side of the road.

"That looks a bit like our van." Fitz notes as the video feed seems to be standing in the street staring at the van. The video feed transitions suddenly like x-ray vision and shows the inside of vehicle with three human figures sitting on stools and a third leaning over what looks like a desk.

"What are we looking at?" Simmons asks nervously. Fitz stands up suddenly as they all stare at the screen, the figure in the middle stands up as well and mirrors his actions as he holds out his arms and waves them in the air - just like the one on x-ray screen as well.

"Us." He realizes and the video feed shows something moving towards the van.

An engine revs loudly and something crashes into the SHIELD van, knocking over all three of them. Skye crawls into the front seat vaguely struggling through memories of her past cases and more visions of the future. She shakes her head viciously trying to control herself, words spilling from her mouth instinctively.

"Let's get out of here." She tries to start the engine only for it to turn over and sputter as she stomps her foot down on air. "Grrrr, stupid tall person." She mutters to herself. She turns in her seat quickly. "Call Coulson. Get the gun." She orders the two still tangled in each other on the floor of the van.

Simmons grabs the phone in one hand and hands the gun from the floor to Skye. The hacker closes her eyes and sighs, knowing she has to allow what's going to happen next. She glances out the window seeing Amador herself in the truck that has backed up.

"It's her." She tells the scientists and then glances down at the gun in her hands. "Safety off." She presses the wrong catch and the magazine of dendrotoxin bullets falls out. She looks nervously out the window as Amador speeds closer. "Bang?" Skye whimpers and Amador's truck smashes into the white van, knocking it off the road, down the small hill and completely over before driving off.

Coulson and Ward immediately retrieve the team and take them back to the BUS. May stands on the railing, looming over with an impassive mask on her face as FitzSimmons head for the lab and Ward and Coulson drop off the gear they salvaged from the van before making their way for the command center. May disappears into the cockpit.

Instead, Skye heads for her laptop in her bunk. She plugs in her headphones, ones that have a microphone she can speak into and then begins typing. Skye opens up some emails she hasn't used in a while and then starts a program she wrote and hadn't touched in years. She starts it up and links it to a familiar signal waiting patiently until it starts to slow and then alerts start popping up. Skye grins and types methodically as she assists her program into slipping around the massive amounts of firewalls and security that had been built up over the years around the server she's hacking into.

Finally, she finds the backdoor she's left into the five-year old coding and sends off a little notification for the other person she knows is on the other end. Within seconds, he's found her and is trying to boot her out of the system. A small chat window opens up.

_IT HAS BEEN A LONG TIME SINCE YOU'VE HACKED INTO MR. STARK'S SERVER, SKYNET._

Skye grins.

_i needed to get his attention somehow._ _tell me J does he still need you to hold his hand while he hacks into government servers?_

"Skynet?" A deep questioning voice comes through her headphones and Skye can't help smirking at the countermeasures JARVIS and Tony Stark are employing to her program at the same time.

"Hello Anthony." There's a long moment she can hear cursing and another softer voice in the background.

"Wow, you know with all the times we've spoken, you've always used that voice distorter. And because of the things you've mentioned over the years, I'd begun to think you were a man. But - you're a girl." He accuses her and she laughs softly.

"Woman, thank you very much. And if all goes according to plan, you'll actually get to meet me face-to-face very soon." Skye says as she starts uploading several links to files she had compiled and encrypting them onto Stark's server.

"Will we now?" He sounds very intrigued. "So what may I ask, is your purpose into hacking my servers after two years of radio silence?"

"Well for one thing, I need a place to secure some information and data that I've compiled and have you actually look something else over until I can retrieve it."

"You could've just asked." Skye rolls her eyes, imagining him pouting at her.

"You haven't been answering my emails."

"Which account did you send them to?"

"It doesn't matter. The second reason is that I've been constrained for time because I've piggybacked onto a SHIELD mobile unit for the time being."

"Really? I always got the sense that you hated them."

"I hated the secrets I thought they were keeping from me and the rest of the world. Turns out there are a few good agents I've come across and I'm . . . actually the second consultant they've hired on at the moment."

"Nu-uh. No. There's no _way_ with your reputation and work that you'd _ever_ attach yourself to a shady government agency. And besides, _I'm_ the only consultant with them, and even that relationship is strained right now." He explains to her.

"Well, how about I put it to you this way: I've uncovered something so big that it will make the history books and if we don't play this correctly, we'll be on the losing side of a coming war."

There was a long and worrying pause before someone else spoke up.

"Miss. Hi, this is-"

"Dr. Banner, it's an honor to actually be speaking to you. Your work in the field of gamma radiation is fascinating. I have a few friends that have followed your work religiously and are big fans." Skye gushes to him as she types furiously, finishing up her data transfer.

"Thank you." He sounds hesitant but Skye continues on in a hurry.

"Look, I don't have a lot of time, but I respect you and your skills enough that I need you to keep these encrypted files safe for a while, Anthony."

"I really wish you wouldn't call me that." Tony says with an exaggerated sigh. "But of course I'll keep them safe."

"You can try to break the encryption all you want, if you want to peek, but I'm sure you won't be able to crack them. At least not until I unlock them myself."

"Oh, please." Tony scoffs. "You might be the best hacker I've come across but I can still run circles around you." He says as JARVIS finally manages to shut down her signature program that had been holding back the pointed attacks.

"Then why can't you catch me?" Skye says playfully as she skillfully dodges JARVIS's attempt to maneuver her out of the systems. "Look, I appreciate you doing this, but I also need you to keep an eye on something for me. I've been watching multiple moving pieces but it's getting tiring. I can't do all of this on my own." She says as she leaves a few lines of coding to protect and hide her backdoor while at the same time, drawing JARVIS and Tony's attention to her blatant motions towards his encrypted projects he's been working on with Banner.

"What else do you need Skynet?" Tony asks as he shakes his head, his hand moving through his holo-equipment as he helps JARVIS block Skyenet's moves.

"I want you to look into the company Cybertek. Some of their more expensive tech that's being sold is brilliant but is highly questionable if only for their experimentation process and where they're getting their ideas. I've checked them out and they are more shady than SHIELD is right now."

"Sure no problem, Skynet."

"Thanks, I really appreciate this. But whatever you find, be careful you don't do anything to draw their attention."

"No problem, I'll check them out and get back to you in a few days on one of your forums."

"Great, thanks Tony. It was nice meeting you Dr. Banner. Skynet out." She says and quickly exits his systems, erasing any sign that she had been there in the first place as well.

In the newly named Avengers Tower, Bruce Banner turns to Tony Stark with a questioning gaze. Tony avoids his eyes as he waves his hands over the holo-keyboard rapidly.

"JARVIS, did you get anything from her?"

"I'm sorry sir, she seems to have erased all signs of her codes and signature off our systems, yet again, except for those encrypted files she said she needed secure." Tony smiles wryly to himself.

"Damn she is good."

"Tony, who the hell was that?" Bruce asks him and Tony finally faces him.

"That, my friend, is someone I've been trying to hire onto my staff for the last eight years."

"She sounded young. And you admire her. That's unusual." Bruce thought aloud as Tony moved around him, fiddling with equipment.

"I don't admire a lot of people, but I came across Skynet on some forums about nine years ago. She'd been bragging about her skills and I challenged her to break into my systems. A year later she did it. I offered her a job and she refused. Didn't like my products or how I advertised them."

"That was-"

"Two years before I found out Stane had been dealing under the table, yeah. Then when I came out as Iron Man, she gave me a few tips on updating my security in case anyone tried to rip off ideas on how to build their own suits, and they worked. We've kept in contact over the years and I've followed her online as much as I could. The last I knew, she'd joined the Rising Tide."

"You mean that group of hacktavists that have been releasing government secrets onto the web?" Bruce sounded surprised.

"Yeah, they believe in freedom of information. But she's always been more reserved in releasing things she'd found on questionable Chinese companies or suspected Russian politicians or corrupt CEOs." 

"Well, what worries me is that, she just told us she's uncovered some sort of mass conspiracy that could lead to another war. She's apparently working with a SHIELD team right now. And Fury's been calling you trying to get ahold of us for the last few days. This could be connected." Bruce tells Tony pointedly.

Tony rolls his eyes, mumbling under his breath about stupid pirates suddenly being trustworthy as he retrieves his phone from where it's charging.

Meanwhile, back on the BUS, Ward confronts Coulson.

"Sir, Amador attacked you and your people. Whatever regard you hold for her isn't reciprocated. She just kicked us in the teeth."

"How's the team?" Coulson asks tiredly.

"Rattled. No broken bones. We're lucky she just knocked the van over, so she could get away. Probably take awhile for our folks to refocus." Ward surmised Amador's intentions in her attack.

Skye stood in the doorway and spoke up. "I think I can recover the data signature of that encrypted broadcast. I don't understand it yet, but that's how she was watching us. Give me an hour, maybe we can start watching back." She tells him excitedly.

Everyone convenes down in the lab watching as Skye cracks the encrypted signal.

"Something's wrong." She tells them as she works. "It's the same feed that was watching us in the van. Uh, put it on the big monitor." She nods at Fitz and he moves to do it.

"Maybe the lens broke when the van rammed us." Simmons theorizes.

"I hope she broke more than that." Skye snarks as she taps onto her tablet and they all face the big screen.

The screen shows Amador wiping steam off a glass.

"It's a mirror." Coulson realizes as he moves around the table. "Are we recording this?"

"Uh - we are now." Skye says after pushing a button on her tablet.

"How are we seeing this?" Coulson asks in awe at the clear video feed. "Where's the camera."

Skye begins to feel sick to her stomach as they watch the camera pan down to a small thin tool that is picked up and Amador uses a compact mirror to use the tool on herself.

"It's her eye.  _She's_ the camera." May says in surprise. FitzSimmons are half fascinated half disgusted as they watch the tool actually used on her eye, while Ward winces at the blatant display. Skye can't help as her jaw drops.

Amador blinks in the mirror and the video feed turns back into x-ray vision showing Amador's head with the machine eye inside her skull.

"It switches to backscatter when she closes her eyes." Fitz speaks up.

"You're a robot." Skye says to Ward, trying to lighten the mood. "Can you do that?" She glances up at him teasingly.

He closes his eyes in frustration before questioning the scientists on the team. "Who has tech like this?" 

"We don't - not like this. That's not small and internal, that's at least a decade ahead of anything I've seen. Though, now that I've seen it, maybe now I could approximate it. Uh, the backscatter x-ray, a micro-transceiver that somehow doesn't fry her brain, an internal power source . . ." Fitz thinks hard as Simmons shakes her head in astonishment.

"All miniaturized. Honestly, it's . . ."

"Genius." FitzSimmons conclude.

"We have to bring her in." Coulson says as he watches Amador lower the tool and the mirror.

"We have to take her out. She's a weapon." May says sharply. "I'll call H.Q. See if we can bring a task force in to help us."

"Our team can handle this." Coulson turns to her and she glances over at him an eyebrow cocked at him.

FitzSimmons step back as she moves around them and the table to stand in front of Coulson who turns back to the feed. "I get it." She says softly. "You feel responsible - maybe you pushed her too hard. But she tried to kill three members of our team."

"If she wanted us dead, we'd be dead." Coulson says solemnly.

"We got lucky. You want to risk our lives again?" May asks him.

"You told me you were ready for combat, that you had my back." Coulson argues.

"Don't ever doubt it." May says quietly but with ice in her voice. "But you are defending this girl at the expense of the team."

"Because we protect our own."

"With all due respect, sir," Ward interrupts. "She's not one of our own."

"Guys." Skye gets their attention back on the video feed. Amador is writing on a piece of paper:  _CAN I SLEEP?_

"Why does she have to ask for permission?" Simmons questions.

There's a pause and then on the video feed:  **STAND BY** is typed out at the bottom of Amador's vision.

"She's not being watched." Coulson thinks out loud. "She's being controlled. We have to find her." He turns back to the team. "We'll take shifts watching the feeds. Sooner or later she'll look at something that will clue us into her location."

May's face is blank as she volunteers for the first watch.

Everyone disperses from the monitor to get ready for bed. Skye checks in with Coulson before she heads to bed.

"I just wanted to give you a quick update. She's still at the hotel, so . . . and that's the update." She finishes awkwardly. Coulson looks up fondly at her as she moves into his office. "It's a pretty weird day, huh? It's like we were trapped in a van-shaped pinata." Skye says calmly.

"That should never have happened." Coulson tells her.

"It's okay. It wasn't nearly as terrible as watching mom and dad fight downstairs."

"That shouldn't have happened either." Coulson sighs glancing down at his paperwork and then back up at her. "You regret coming along? Or back I should say."

"The way things have turned out . . . no. The first few decisions in meeting you guys were pretty impulsive, even for me, though. Despite what you might think, I still don't know much about you. Except that you value really old stuff." Skye said looking at his collectibles around his office. Then she meets his gaze. "And you value me. I know you guys didn't trust me when you first brought me on, especially May and even after everything I've told you . . . but you were and _are,_ the first person to do that in a very long time. So I happen to believe you are an excellent judge of character. I know you believe this woman deserves a second chance, and as long as you believe it enough, the rest of the team will follow you - despite May's first instincts."

Coulson smiled at her as Skye let herself out of his office, closing the door quietly behind her. He walks down the stairs to check on the video feed and finds Fitz asleep at his station.

"Fitz." The scientist wakes up groggily.

"What?"

"What happened? Where's May?"

"Uh, I don't know." Fitz answers tiredly, stifling a yawn. "She was watching the transmission. Amador must be sleeping." Fitz grabs Skye's tablet and starts tapping away at it as Coulson, alarmed and trying not to panic steps in front of the big screen.

"Play it back." He orders Fitz and the Scot stands up, standing beside him as he obeys. It takes a few moments before they see the typed in command. "There, she got another message - Todorov building." They watch intently as Fitz inputs it into the tablet before Coulson's eyes narrow at the video feed. "Wait, stop. Can you get closer on that receipt?" He asks and Fitz zooms in the picture for him. "Damn it, May." Coulson mutters as he realizes May picked up the title of the hotel on the receipt as well and took off to confront Amador. "Wake the others." Coulson tells Fitz and he nods, rushing to comply.

Holed up in a hotel room, Amador wakes suddenly as the light switch goes on and May begins to speak. She pointedly does not look in May's direction.

"Whoever's monitoring you, do they have audio?"

"No. But they'll use facial recognition to determine you're a SHIELD agent."

"So I don't have to introduce myself." May says cautiously.

"Did Coulson send you?" Amador assumes but May steps forward towards her slowly.

"No. He feels sorry for you. I don't. I'm bringing you into SHIELD. You'll get a fair trial and no one else gets hurt." She says calmly.

"You have no idea, do you?" Amador asks in a condescending tone.

"We know that you receive orders."

"Then you know that once they see you, only one of us gets to walk out of here. They built in a fail-safe." May thinks quickly as Amador finally meets her gaze. "Either I kill you . . . or they kill me."

"You should've stayed in bed." May quips but Amador's already moving towards her, bringing the gun she slept with under her pillow up to fire at her attacker.

May knocks it out of her hand easily and they trade blows at a fast rate until May shoves her into the room service cart with food and cutlery on it. Amador grabs a knife and hurls it expertly at May but she dodges it easily. So Amador closes her eyes and swings her arm around, knocking out the lamp and throwing the room into darkness, while she relies on the backscatter vision behind her closed eyelids as an advantage over May. She finds the gun at her feet and immediately tries to shoot May once more, but Coulson bursts into the room and shoots her with an ICER.

When Amador next wakes up, Coulson is sitting in a chair, watching over her. "Hello Akela. You're safe now."

It takes her a few minutes of disorientation from the drugged bullet before her brain reengages her thought process, but she immediately panics, sitting up and quickly looking away from her old boss.

"Give it a minute. I hit you with a powerful dendrotoxin."

Akela shakes her head trying to make sense of why she isn't dead yet. "There's a kill switch in my eye. Why hasn't my handler blown it yet?" She asks bewilderedly.

"As far as your handler knows, you fought Agent May, you both went down, then you got up and left the building to complete your mission." He answers her in the same calm tone May was using before.

"How?"

"We hijacked your feed." Coulson can't help the proud note in his voice seep through. "One of my agents is wearing a set of glasses mimicking your implant. Right now, it's transmitting his point of view as if it was yours." He narrates Ward wearing a suit and glasses that are hooked up to Skye's laptop while she works her magic while they drive to the Todorov building. "It even has backscatter imaging."

"I get messages from my handler." Amador tells him in a shaky voice, not daring to believe him, even as the faintest whiff of hope unfurls in her chest.

"We're receiving those as well." Coulson answers. May is standing in the command center watching from the camera feed in the Cage on the BUS as her partner speaks with Amador who is still refusing to look at him. "My agent's on his way to the Todorov building - completing your mission while we disable the fail-safe in your eye. I promise." He says softly. "They can't see you. You're okay, Akela . . . look at me." He requests.

She hesitates before slowly turning her head around to face him. She makes eye contact and slowly releases a breath.

"How long have they been monitoring you?" He asks her.

She swallows hard past the lump in her throat then responds in a quiet voice. "Years. Why are you doing this, Coulson?"

"I need to know why a prox card is worth thirty million-"

"No." She cuts him off in a low voice. "Why are you doing _this_? Why are you helping me?" She asks hoarsely. "Where's the 'I told you so'?"

He gives a little sigh, understanding. "That's not me anymore. I'm just glad you're alive." He tells her quietly.

She shakes her head in disbelief, still wallowing in her guilt as she looks away. "Vanchat would've never caught us if I'd done my job. I should have listened to you . . . Trusted my team the way you insisted. If I had, they might still be alive." She tries to blink the tears away but one falls insistently.

May's breath catches in her throat at the raw emotion Amador shows as she watches them. It reminds her of what Skye had said. That if she hadn't come clean to Coulson about her involvement with Fury and his secrets she would've lost his trust and respect much later and faced his anger for a long time.

Ward and Skye finally arrive at their destination. "Where are we?" Skye asks.

"Todorov Building." He squints at the people entering. "I think it's research, not military." He observes.

"Looks like a prison." Skye notes.

"We wireless yet?" He asks her and she types a few keys, waiting for the responding sounds til it finishes loading.

"Yep," she pops the last letter casually and straightens in her seat to lean forward. "Ready to detach." She says and reaches for the wire connected to the glasses, Ward is wearing. She grabs the wire behind his ear and Ward stiffens and turns quickly in his seat. " _Don't_ look at me." Skye scolds him as she grabs his head firmly in her hand still holding the wire. "They need to think you're her." Ward practically whines as she uses both hands to unplug the wire from the glasses. "And, oh my god, super spy is ticklish." She realizes, teasing him.

Back on the plane, Coulson is still questioning Amador and hands her a water bottle.

"How did you manage to escape?"

"I didn't. Got caught in a crossfire, went down. Woke up in some half-assed triage bay, blind in this eye." She gestures to her right eye. "Spent the next four years alone in a cage at the bottom of a copper mine." She drinks gratefully from the bottle as he responds reassuringly.

"We looked for you. Heard rumors you'd been taken to Shanxi Province." He prodded her to continue.

"When a team finally came, I thought it was SHIELD at first, but . . ."

"Who were they?" Coulson asked.

"Don't know, even to this day. But they were organized. They took me to a clinic. I had multiple surgeries. Until one day, I could see out of both eyes again. I was so grateful . . . until I realized what they'd done." She finishes with a pointed look.

"Someone was watching." Coulson assumes and she nods.

"My every move. I had no idea until they sent the first message. Then the assignments started. Mostly it was, "Steal this," "Follow him," Break into there." I just tried to ignore them. But when I did, I'd get this pain. Like an electric migraine." She frowns remembering. 

"The fail-safe." Coulson titles it.

"Polite way of putting it." She nods again then looks down. "Now when I think about my years in the cage . . . I miss it. I wish I could go back, be alone, sleep in peace." Amador says bitterly taking another sip of her water as Coulson leans forward in his chair, staring at her intensely.

"I know you're tired, but I need your help." He tells her.

"If you want information on the prox card, you're out of luck." She assumes correctly.

"You can't go on missions without intel." Coulson reminds her.

"It comes in pieces - a name, an address."

Even as Amador speaks to Coulson, Skye and Ward receive the information like she explained through the glasses as words flash up in front of them.

_Location confirmed. Proceed to Delta S._

"It would  _suck_ to live like this." Skye says to Ward, still sitting behind the driver's seat. "Wondering if someone's watching."

Ward ignores her, focusing on the task in front of him. "Testing backscatter." He tells her and reaches up, pushing a tiny button on the glasses and looks over at the car next to them, showing the vision through the glasses and the screen where the feed on Skye's laptop show the engine and parts of the car. He turns them off.

Skye finishes fiddling with the laptop and the tiny wireless console for the glasses. "Good to go." She tells him, leaning forward again to hand it to him and he pointedly looks away from her as he reaches around the seat for the device.

"Remember, I cant' look at you, much less help you." He tells her solemnly.

She nods, even though he can't see her. "Got it. Don't count on you for help." Skye can't help rolling her eyes at his macho superiority attitude. He gets out of the car and strolls casually towards the building. "I'll be watching." Skye mutters darkly to herself.

Meanwhile, back on the BUS Coulson stands up and starts asking the harder questions of Amador.

"Come on, Akela. You've never spoken to or met anyone in person?"

"No. Only contacts are the messages I've received from the Englishman."

"The Englishman - your handler? How do you know he's English?"

"The way he refers to certain things. He uses "lift" instead of "elevator," and "boot" instead of "trunk."

"Think about the messages." Coulson prompts her as he paces. "What else do you know about him?"

"He's late thirties, early forties." She thinks scooting up on the bed she's sitting on. "Uses dated references - "disk drive" instead of "flash drive," and "Burma" instead of "Myanmar."

"How's his typing?" Coulson asks and sits down as Amador considers the question.

"Clumsy. Makes a lot of mistakes."

"Thick fingers," Coulson surmises, "maybe heavyset."

"I forgot how good you are." Amador gives him a small smile.

Coulson doesn't flinch as Simmons voice rings in his ear through the coms.

"Sir, we're ready down here."

Skye checks in with the science twins and relays it with Ward. "Fitz and Simmons are prepped for surgery." She tells him over coms. "It should be any minute now." Ward walks into the building and heads towards security. Skye watches him intently on the screen. "Hey, remember you have man hands, so don't look when you scan the card."

"I know." He reminds her quietly. Passing his security card over the sensor, waiting for the green light and corresponding beep before walking past the security guard in the lobby.

Amador settles down in the lab of the BUS while Coulson watches her from the corner with FitzSimmons.

"Ward's on-site so we don't have much time." He warns Fitz and Simmons.

"To remove her eyeball." Fitz finishes, trying to process what he and Simmons have to do.

"Yeah, ocular surgery is not really my field of expertise." Simmons protests.

"We've got no other choice." Coulson tells them. "There's a kill switch inside Akela. Could be a poison, could be an explosive. Either way, if Ward's caught, they'll kill her instantly."

"Where are you going, sir?" Fitz as Coulson as he moves towards the lab doors.

"To find whose finger is on the trigger."

Ward heads towards a second security check point. "Approaching Delta Three." He mutters to Skye as the scanner beeps his security card through.

She watches the screen intently. "Careful! Mirror." She warns him and he turns his head away.

"Don't need your help." He mutters again and she rolls her eyes.

Coulson meets May in the command center.

"Handler's definitely local." She updates him, staring down at a map on the holotable.

"Any idea where he's transmitting from?" He asks her.

"Somewhere here." She gestures showing the colored circle on the map shown on the screen of the table. "Every time he transmits a message we get closer."

"Keep me updated on Comm 3." He tells her. "I'm headed out now."

"I'll track him down if you want to stay here and oversee the OP." May offers even as he heads for the stairs.

He turns, halting and addressing her directly. "Thank you, this one's mine. And about earlier-"

"Go." May interrupts softly. "Find the guy."

Downstairs in the lab, Simmons has all her equipment ready and nervously speaks to Amador.

"I may need your feedback during the operation, which means I have to inject a local anesthetic into your eye rather than putting you under."

"Whatever's necessary." Amador tells Simmons who looks a bit taken aback at the calm exterior the darker skinned woman is showing.

"Right." Simmons murmurs. "Let's begin, then." She says in a perky voice, turning on the light to her headpiece. She grabs the long needle and hovers over Amador's right eye, nervous and second-guessing herself until Amador reaches up and grabs her wrist.

"Let me." She reassures the younger woman and pulls her arm down steadily so the needle pierces the rounded edge of her cornea and injects the drug directly into the eye. Fitz is squeamish enough that he has to turn away, whimpering at the noises the flesh and needle make.

Skye is keeping track of Ward at the same time, seeing through the window of an office where a security guard obviously sits at his desk and computer. She and Ward wait for the handler to transmit his next message.

_Target confirmed. Stand by._

Ward hides next to the wall of the window as Skye stresses. "What do they mean "target?"'

"It's never good, especially for the "target." Let's hope it's a knockout and not a kill." Ward tells her.

"You should get out of there." Skye tells him, remembering what's at the end of this mission.

"I've come this far." He reassures her. "I'll finish, whatever it takes." He peeks through the window as the next message is transmitted onto his glasses and Skye's screen.

_Seduce him._

"Help." Ward whispers staring at the beefy Russian guard.

"I'm sorry, did you just say help? Because a minute ago, you said you didn't want or need my help." Skye loves throwing his words back in her face as she tries not to laugh.

"That was before they asked me to go all Mata Hari on this guy." Ward hisses at her through the coms and she covers her laughter with a coughing fit as Ward peeks through the glass again before shaking his head. "I'm just gonna knock him out."

"Ward, wait. We may need him to get through the next door. Remember? It said seduce, not kill." She reminded him with an amused look on her face.

The specialist sighed before peering through the glass one more time. "I don't think I'm his type." He whispers sharply.

"Let me see." Skye zooms in on her screen. "Cheap haircut, five 'o' clock shadow, nope. Odds are you guys play for the same team." She considers for a second then nods to herself. "You're gonna have to bromance him. Talk sports, vodka, the Victorianov Secret catalog." She teases him, listing things he can speak to with the guy. "Be friendly Agent Ward. Can you be friendly?"

Ward takes a deep breath, wanting to kill himself and Skye for witnessing this humiliation. He gathers himself and then presses his card to the scanner next to the door, walking through as the security guy stands up in surprise and speaks Russian to Ward, who stands in front of him, his stance casual and relaxed and responding easily.

 _"Show me your identification."_ The security guard demands in Russian.

 _"How_ _about that game last night?"_ Ward asks as he pretends to search his pockets.

 _"Your ID?"_ The security guard doesn't take the bait.

 _"I think I left it at home."_ Ward admits after a large sigh and trying to keep his posture as disarming and flippant as possible. He steps forward taking a breath.  _"Had a wild night. Met these two Ukrainian girls . . ."_ Ward smirks at the guard, chuckling.  _"Didn't sleep much._ _You know how it is, right?"_ Ward asks the guard grinning. The guard is completely indifferent and Ward asks twice more before the grin slips from his face. "Guess not." He says in English and the guard acts immediately.

The guard swings his arm forward and Ward grabs him, turning him and throwing his head against his own desk, doing it once more so the guard is completely knocked out. Ward lets the guard slump to the ground and steps over him as Skye watches through his glasses. He puts his security card up to the scanner next to the following door once more and steps through the door, closing it behind him. He checks out the room, seeing chalk boards on all the walls, most of which has mathematical equations, formulas and graphs written on them and two men sitting at desks in the middle of the room, with typewriters in front of them. They glance at him once before going back to their typing.

"What now?" Skye asks.

He checks out all the walls, finding one dedicated to strange symbols, circles and lines and triangles in strange patterns. One that Skye recognizes immediately. The glasses seem to lighten and then take a picture.

_Mission Complete. Good luck._

Is transmitted onto the glasses. 

On the BUS May is narrowing down the area where Amador's handler is sending the messages. "They just sent another message." She tells Coulson over the coms. "Coulson, he's close - only a few blocks from you. He's somewhere in Victory Square." May tells him as he strides down the street before beginning to job. "One more message should lock in his precise location."

Meanwhile, Ward walks back out of the room and notices the computer the security guard he took out was sitting at. It has a large tab open with a space to enter a password and a clock counting down the seconds til the password was needed before setting off an alarm. The clock is set for nine more seconds.

"Figured out what I needed the guard for - his password." He tells Skye.

"Maybe I can talk you through a hack - just give me a minute." Skye says, frowning down at her laptop.

It's too late though. Ward watches as the clock hits zero and the alarm blares. "No more minutes." He tells her and bends over, grabbing the security guard's gun. "Meet me on the south side of the building, asap."

"Gotcha." She gets out of the car, to hurry around towards the drivers seat.

Ward tries to be as inconspicuous as possible but he manages to draw a guard's attention and then begins to be chased by him.

Meanwhile, Simmons is working hard on Amador while Fitz cowers in a corner at the disgusting sounds of surgery, purposely not looking.

"Please tell me it's out already." He pleads as Simmons sets down a tool.

Simmons shrugs unconsciously as she considers her patient. "It's, mostly out."

"What's wrong?" Amador asks, reading her tone of voice.

"Nothing." Simmons tries reassuring her as Fitz chances a glance over. "But Dr. Fitzy needs to step in now." Simmons tells her as she pulls out the fleshy part of the eye. "This is his area of expertise not mine." Fitz can't stop staring at the small device attached to the eye. "Fitz."

The British doctor gets his attention and he straightens, walking around the table and allowing Simmons to hand off the clamp with the eye in it's grasp. He stares down at the device and wires connected. He takes a breath to settle his stomach and then begins thinking out loud.

"Alright, then. Most likely, both the power source and kill switch are located within the eye itself. So, how to disconnect without triggering the kill switch?" He considers it for a moment and then smiles. "Oh, um, I know what to do. Um," he clears his throat nervously, "I just need to clarify one thing."

Ward at the moment turns a corner and activates the backscatter as a telephone rings loudly in the empty hallway and looks into the room divided by the wall he's flattened himself against. He can see guards in what looks like a command room for security of the building. The people inside begin to move quickly as they are alerted to the danger and he starts running, shooting through the wall, at them inside.

"Ward?" Fitz's voice comes over the coms as Ward stops shooting and he snaps at the younger man.

"What?"

"You sound winded. Is this a bad time?" Fitz tries to keep his voice pleasant and even as he still holds the eye in his clamp.

"Little bit." Ward says exasperatedly as he ducks behind a small half-wall as guards run past him towards the command room.

"Well, not so good for me either, considering I'm holding a still-attached prosthetic eye that could explode at any second." He says sarcastically, even as Ward moves across the wall as guards continue running past him.

"Are the wires exposed or shielded?" Ward asks. He peeks around the half-wall to check that the guards are gone and look straight into a reflective glass that shows him clearly to Amador's handler. He panics as he orders Fitz, "Cut it now, cut the wires now!"

"What's happening?" Amador asks a little stressed.

"Oh, no problem. Ward explained the sitch." Fitz says in a strained voice as he grabs some scissors and with swift smooth movements cuts the wires and drops the eye in a circular steel container that Simmons quickly braces the top on top, just as it explodes. Simmons waits a few seconds before removing the top and reveals smoke coming out of the container. She and Fitz look inside, waving away the smoke giving out sighs of relief.

Ward, in the meantime is still moving within the building. He hesitates before dashing up some stairs. "Coming your way." He warns Skye.

She's driving slowly as she looks for him out the windshield. "I don't know what that means." She slams her hand against the driving wheel frustratedly.

Ward turns another corner as a guard starts to catch up and shoots at him. Ward glances back before shooting at a window, cracking and weakening the glass before running through it and crashing into the fragile awning and then jumping onto an empty storage container. He jumps down in front of Skye's van and she screeches to a halt. He opens the passenger door and slips inside.

"Let's go." He orders and she speeds out of there.

Coulson, on the other hand, finally makes it to the street where he and May have deduced Amador's handler is located.

"He probably left, as soon as he threw the kill switch." Coulson theorizes.

Something beeps on the holotable in front of May. "He's there, twenty meters from you." She tells him urgently.

He looks around frantically seeing a potential target before he finally sees a balding red-headed heavyset Englishman with a briefcase. Coulson crosses the street and steps in front of the Englishman's path.

"Excuse me, sir." He walks up to him.

The man looks worried as he tries not to make eye contact with Coulson, shaking his finger at him. "I'm sorry, but I'm very late."

Coulson opens his badge and shows him discretely so as not to make a scene, but he's too late, even as he says the words. "I'm with SHIELD."

"Oh, God." The man murmurs and then his right eye shorts out, blood filling his cornea and he keels over. Coulson stares down at him for a moment, processing what just happened. He meets back on the BUS with May and then, once they finally land to hand off Amador, he explains to her what he found out about her dead handler.

"He was an MI6 officer who fell off the grid years ago."

"My handler was as trapped as I was." Amador concludes.

"Which mean's the real threat's still out there." Coulson warns her. "Big SHIELD's still trying to decipher what was written on that chalkboard. Nobody's seen anything like it." He walks her through the plane, towards the ramp where there are agents waiting on them. "Couple of people might think it might be alien - possibly an equation." He pauses, turning to her. "Must be important if it's worth thirty million dollars. We'll figure it out." He finishes confidently. He glances to where she's staring at the agents who are waiting by a car and he gives her a small smile. "You'll get a fair trial." He reassures her quietly. "I plan on testifying. I know people." He says confidently even as she peers skeptically at him. "You deserve a second chance."

She shakes her head. "You already gave me one. It doesn't matter how it plays out from here. I'm free. Thank you." She says even as May steps towards them.

"Good luck." He wishes her and starts up the stairs as May moves to escort her towards the agents still at the car.

"What happened to Agent Coulson? He's different." Amador asks May.

"Well, he's loosened up a bit. He nearly died before the Battle of New York."

Amador leans closer to May's ear and asks more intently, "But what did they _do_ to him?"

May's expression doesn't change, even as she halts in her steps at the bottom of the ramp, and turns almost curiously to her. "I'm sorry?"

Amador reads May's non-expression quickly and shakes her head as if erasing the moment. "Never mind." She steps away from May, moving quickly towards the car.

It's later, when the BUS is in the air and Coulson opens the door to the SUV, revealing Skye in the backseat with just her phone this time.

"Are you still, needing your _you_  time?" Coulson asks with a wry smile and Skye smiles back at him.

"There's always room for A.C. Slide on in." She moves her legs towards her chest and leans against the opposite door as he crawls in and closes the door behind him.

"What's wrong with . . . Agent Coulson, or just Coulson?"

"Nothing, I guess. AC's just - way cooler." They both chuckle. Then she sobers a bit. "Cause you are - cool. Not many people would've made that call. To give Amador a second chance."

"I got one." He says staring out the front of the SUV. "Seems only fair I extend the same opportunity towards others." They're both quiet for a moment. "I see why you like it in here." Coulson tells her.

"Yeah." She smiles broadly at the familiarity. "It's kinda like my van . . . without all the bums trying to break in. I don't miss that." She glances over at him with a grin. "Plus, it helps me kind of settle into a familiar mindset." She admits sheepishly and he huffs out another laugh. "It's more peaceful here." She breathes out slowly, keeping her heart rate in mind. "It's also cool knowing that someone has my back . . . no matter what." She finishes.

"Peaceful's good." Coulson says drowsily.

It takes about five minutes for Skye to work up the courage to break the relaxing silence.

"So, I should probably warn you . . ." Coulson sighs at those words and opens his eyes, straightening in his seat.

"What did you do?" He says in that assuming tone and she fidgets under his knowing gaze before leaning forward, flipping open her phone and pushing a few buttons. A soft whine emits from the speakers.

"It's a frequency I've been using to cancel out any bugs Ward might have planted on the plane." He looks impressed for a few seconds before he nods at her to continue. "So, I figure Fury's doing everything he can to bring the Avengers together and we can all meet so I can explain more of what's coming. But I contacted Tony Stark earlier." Coulson stares at her for a moment, not blinking and she hurries on to explain herself. "He doesn't know me personally, but I've hacked into his servers before and met JARVIS all under a hacker handle. We've become - I don't know, acquaintances, friends maybe - over the years. He tries to hire me for his IT security or research department at least twice a year. Anyway, I revealed myself to him today. I encrypted and secured a bunch of files I've got specifically on Cybertek and things I've compiled to show during our meeting, onto Stark's servers. They're more secure than SHIELD at the moment and I, er, gave a few hints that those phone calls of Fury's he's deliberately not answering are more important than he thinks. I spoke with him and Dr. Banner and asked them to guard the files and information I'm hiding on his servers for me until we meet face to face."

Skye nervously shifts under Coulson's gaze until he finally blinks and opens his mouth.

"You've hacked into Tony Stark's servers?" He sounds incredulous.

"Well, yeah. He found me online when I was about seventeen. I'd been bragging about how I'd hacked into the CIA and he challenged me to break into his own servers. It took me months to poke and prod his systems enough to get a feel for how they were before writing up programs that would work around his firewalls and security. I did it all on my own and a year later, I cracked his systems. His AI found me poking around some of his weapons files and it took him _and_ Tony Stark to toss me out of his servers. But I left a backdoor I'd written in and have visited multiple times to talk and give suggestions on his security. I had someone help me create a voice distorter and I've spoken with Tony and JARVIS over the years. I haven't contacted him in, God, maybe two years since I joined the Rising Tide."

Coulson was quiet as he considered everything Skye had told him.

"I'm still trying to get over the fact that you've hacked and made friends with JARVIS." He tells her after letting out a breath.

She smiles at him and folds her legs in a crisscross. "I just wanted to let you know that I asked him to keep my files secure and to keep an eye on something for me. Look," She holds up her hand as Coulson starts to protest. "Asking him to dig deeper into a few things for me and wait until we meet to talk about it all, was necessary. I can't do everything on my own. I'm trying to delegate as I stay focused on what's happening now, and what will happen. There are so many different moving pieces that are all connected, it's hard to keep track of them all. I need his help and I alerted him to Fury's phone calls. This just helps speed up the meeting." She told him.

Coulson looked thoughtful before nodding slowly. "You're right. You have three years of knowledge and that's overwhelming for anyone. If you need help you can ask May or I as well, you know that, don't you?"

Skye nods. "Ward is being an ass with his training, I'm gonna start meeting with May in the mornings before he gets up to join her for Tai Chi and maybe spar with her. I need to stay in shape,  _real shape_."

"Just, make sure you come to me if you need to make any other decisions like that again. Alright?" He made sure her eyes connected with his and she nodded.

"You got it, AC." He huffed out her nickname and shifted back in his seat to rest his eyes. Skye leaned back against the door again, to do the same.

It was later that night when Fitz and Ward were playing Texas Hold'Em that Fitz had a genius plan to win . . . and cheat. He was snacking loudly on his pretzels, and staring his opponent down as if to intimidate the specialist of the team. Ward considered his Jack and Queen of Clubs with a great poker face.

"I call . . ." Then he picked up some chips and dropped them on the pot. "And raise a hundred."

Fitz hummed to himself, setting the bowl of pretzels down and picking up his cards, checking them before speaking loudly.

"You know how I know I'm gonna beat you?" He asks.

"By losing?" Ward deadpans.

Fitz throws his cards down. "You have a tell," he says staring at the specialist. "A psychological tic, that lets me know you're bluffing. If I watch you carefully," Fitz starts staring him down for a long moment as if waiting for something before repeating loudly again, "If I watch you carefully!"

"Oh, sorry. Hang on." Skye's voice comes through a coms that Fitz is wearing as well. She's sitting in her bunk, directly placed behind the lounge area where the boys are playing at the table. Skye's laptop is sitting on her thighs, and she reaches over to pick up the glasses with the backscatter still programmed into them so she can look through the wall and Ward's body to see his cards.

She hesitates for a moment before a smirk grows on her face. "You know if I do this, that not only will I see Ward's cards, but I'll see you without any clothes on?" She asks him smugly.

Fitz freezes for just a moment before he glares down at the table. "I fold. You win." He says quickly, getting up from the table and practically running away. Ward swivels his chair around so he's facing Skye's bunk with a curious frown on his face.

Skye places the glasses on and presses the backscatter button on them so they beep. She struggles to keep a straight face before sighing disappointedly at herself.

"Seriously? Why do psychotic bad guys have to be hot?" She murmurs to herself, even as she continues staring through the door at Ward.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey guys, hope you guys like this chapter.
> 
> Remember I love any and all feedback. I saw all your comments in my long stupid hiatus and felt really happy by them. I'll reply back to most if not all eventually, but thanks for the support.
> 
> I'm not sure if I'll have Miles go back on his word with Skye, or if I'll have an original character altogether from the Rising Tide that Skye knows will have been recruited by a different person other than Raina for the next chapter?
> 
> Or if I'll skip the next episode altogether as if it doesn't happen and move on to the next episode. That was a fun one, jumping out of planes and alien viruses. I'm not sure if I want Skye to be more involved in that, giving more hints to Simmons and Fitz so we don't have the dramatic tense scene of Simmons saying goodbye to everyone or not.
> 
> I'll figure it out.

**Author's Note:**

> Please remember to comment and critique.
> 
> I am still new to writing fan fiction so any feedback is helpful to me and if you like something specifically or have any of your own ideas, feel free to send them to me. I love any and all help.
> 
> Thanks guys.
> 
> :D


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